Buccaneers Dive Into "Complete Disaster"

You'd figure the New York Giants would come in, school the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then head home with a hard-fought victory Sunday. There was nothing hard-fought going on at Raymond James Stadium. Instead, the Buccaneer faithful witnessed a disaster. Head coach Raheem Morris went even further and tabbed it "a complete disaster." Score one for Raheem, on a day when his team failed to score, sending the unbeaten (3-0) Giants back to the Big Apple with a 24-0 skunking of the winless (0-3) Buccaneers. It's a good thing the team now goes on the road for two weeks. It will take that long to get the stench out of Raymond James. It was stinky, it was awful, it was abominable at best. With a little more than nine minutes left in the game, these re-tooled Buccaneers of the Morris-Mark Dominik regime found themselves threatening a throwback to the inglorious days of 1976 Bucdom, the bad old winless days. At that point, Morris finally had mercy on the battered Byron Leftwich and replaced him with backup quarterback Josh Johnson. At that point, the Bucs had managed a paltry 51 yards of total offense. All-time Buccaneer low is 65, from the bad old days. Johnson rescued his team from the lowest of lows. He managed to run for 15 yards and pass for another 36 to get his team to an embarrassing 86 yards of total offense for the day. "We don't use that word," Morris said of the e-word, the "embarrassment" word. Don't worry Raheem, everyone else will take care of that for you. If Morris were to venture out into the real world this week, that's what he'd heard around every Tampa water cooler. It will used often this week. Embarrassing. We're talking about Cadillac Williams getting eight yards on two carries and former Giant Derrick Ward picking up an astonishing two yards on five carries. That's okay, Leftwich went seven-for-16 for 22 yards. Don't worry about Lefty, he'll start against the Redskins next week. "These guys will be better next week," Morris predicted. Safe prediction, it's hard to imagine that they could be worse. This game could have been worse, the Giants appeared to call off the dogs. Eli Manning spent most of the fourth quarter taking in the sights from the sidelines. Leftwich won't be on the sidelines next week. Don't blame him -- Morris doesn't. "If I take Byron Leftwich out, I may as well take everyone else out with him," Morris declared. Perhaps it's not a bad idea. Morris and his guys are now tasked with picking up the pieces from this "total disaster." It's on to Washington and a game with the Redskins, the team that ended the losing streak of the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Perhaps the Redskins of Jim Zorn can lend a hand to Raheem and his guys. Maybe, maybe not. If the Redskins watch the video from this game, they may become entirely overconfident. "You are what your tape says you are and we're not a good football team." And that doesn't bode well for the rest of the season, does it?