By now you have heard all the comparisons you can stand. Your stomach is sick from everyone telling "This year is just like 1996" or "This is how it happened in 2006", and I'm sure I'm guilty of a lot of it! So if your not sure whether your coming or going, or whether its 2010 or 1993, don't worry, just watch the game tomorrow, because its the last one of the season, and you can probably be rest assured I will compare the last game to a last game from years gone by, and try to convince you that it has some kind of meaning. It probably wont!
But if it turns out like it actually did turn out in 1996, then this is what we could look forward to. Because that team had turned the corner, and they knew it. Heck even we all knew it, but the Bucs were still 5-10 and trying to go 6-10, nothing to brag about. They were only 1-8 at one point though.
So while a 4-12 record is nothing to write home about, ask yourself how many fans predicted 4 wins were possible before the Green Bay, or even 3 weeks ago for that matter.
The Bucs had won 4 of their last 6 games back in 1996, so the players and even the fans knew the tide had turned. This years team does not have that kind of selling point. Not to us, not to anyone probably. But win one more, and that is three in a row, and that could turn some heads.
That last game in 1996, the Bucs manhandled the Chicago Bears, scoring 31 points in the first half; after letting the Bears score a TD first! They ran it in, they passed it in, they returned a punt with Karl The Truth Williams, and Michael Husted nailed a 50 yard FG with seconds left in the first half. Nothing could stop them that day, and at the end of the game, no one, not a person in Tampa Bay, could wait for 1997 to come.
Enjoy the movie, and hope you see an instant replay tomorrow.
In 2010 of course.