Bucaneers raid Oakland, take first Super Bowl title

As the old saying goes, "defense wins championships." But in this Super Bowl, maybe it was the defense, maybe it was the offense, or maybe it was just John Gruden.

Crushing the Oakland Raiders 48-21, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gained their first Super Bowl victory in franchise history, while becoming the first team to score over 40 points since the San Francisco 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers 49-26 in 1995.

As the league's number one offense matched up against the number one defense, the Buccaneers became the sixth number one defense in seven Super Bowl appearances to walk away as World Champions.

After being traded from the Raiders to the Bucs this past off-season for several draft picks, Gruden's knowledge of the Oakland offense proved to be an obvious advantage, as the Bucs defense stifled the Raiders for much of the game.

Despite jumping onto the board quickly with a 40-yard field goal from Sebastian Janikowski, the Raiders were held to merely a field goal for the game's entire first half and for much of the third quarter

Trailing by three, five minutes into the first quarter, the Bucs then proceeded to score 34 unanswered points on both offensive and defensive touchdowns.

In a game with little action in the first quarter, followed by a dominant Buccaneer performance in the second and third quarters, there were few highlights for NFL fans outside of the Tampa Bay area to get excited about.

When the Raiders finally began to get their offense into gear, it was a classic case of too little too late, as the Buccaneers quickly put a halt to any hope of an Oakland comeback. Tampa Bay scored its first touchdown with 4:47 left in the third quarter on a controversial 37-yard pass from Rich Gannon to Jerry Porter. The Raiders created a little more excitement at the beginning of the fourth quarter when they blocked a Tampa Bay punt and turned it into another touchdown.

Then six minutes later, Rich Gannon again showed off the skills which made him the regular season MVP with a 48-yard touchdown pass to Jerry Rice, which brought the score to 34-21.

That was all that Tampa Bay's defense would stomach though, as it put a stop to the next Oakland drive, when Derrick Brooks picked off a Gannon pass and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown, which put the Bucs up 41-21.

Following Brooks' interception it was safe to say that the game was over, the Bucs added to the barrage in the final seconds of the game, when yet another Gannon pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Dwight Smith's 50-yard interception return with only two seconds left in the game put the icing on the cake for a Tampa Bay team that had already began donning world champion caps and t-shits.

So just how tough was the Tampa Bay defense on Sunday?

The Buccaneers held the Raiders to a mere 62 yards in the first half, the second lowest yardage total of any team in Super Bowl history.

The victory puts to rest the demons that have been haunting the Bucs for years. From 1983-1996 the Buccaneers were the NFL's worst team, as they went over a decade without a winning season and actually lost ten plus games in 13 out of those 14 seasons. Yet under Gruden the Bucs made the jump into the league's elite class as they improved from 9-7 in the 2001 regular season to 12-4 this year.

Oakland also entered the game without all-pro center Barrett Robbins who was sent home after missing a team meeting yesterday. Despite the efforts of his replacement Adam Treu, Gannon who was sacked four times by the Bucs defense, sorely missed Robbins presence.

And in the end, the NFL's best defense really did prove to be too much for the league's top ranked offense. Hey, maybe defense really does win championships.