I don’t have a dog in this fight, but it seems he just keeps throwing one interception after another. With two minutes to go there goes another one!
There have been many QBs who have good regular seasons who have bad Super Bowls.
See “Elway, John” or “Tarkenton, Fran” or “Marino, Dan”.
On second thought never mind, his poor protection is probably mostly to blame for the interceptions.
I’m sooooooooooo depressed!!! The raiders didn’t have far to travel but still forgot to show up for the game. 
I don’t know if I’m depressed, just pissed, I really wanted the Raiders to win, after the spanking the Eagles took from the Bucs.
Rich Gannon is supposed to be good, after all, he did go to the University of Delaware. He was the NFL’s MVP, he’s my LVP least valuable player.
You know the Bucs do have the #1 rated overall defense and the #1 pass defense. They’ve made every QB they faced this year look awful. I saw a stat that the average QB rating against them was 48.6. I guess it’s true what they say, defense wins championships.
Kinda reminded me of Neil O’Donnell, who threw 2 interceptions to Larry Johnson of the Dallas Cowboys, who also went on to win the SuperBowl MVP, I think for SuperBowl XXX.
Guess Gannon had his money on the Bucs tonight…
Larry Brown was that guy. He got to be MVP pretty much because O’Donnell made two horrible throws.
At least the Bucs guys got their picks because Gannon was under pressure.
That’s right!!! I KNEW I had the wrong Larry when I was typing that…whatever happened to that guy, anyway?
I know he went to the Raiders, but he never seemed to be heard from again after that.
Did Marino ever go to a Superbowl? I can’t remember.
Anyway, Gannon did poorly because…well, when something big is on the line, he always does poorly. He can’t handle the pressure.
Larry Brown was given a big contract from the Raiders and absolutely sucked for them. This was a surprise to pretty much no one except the Raiders. The Cowboys didn’t mind him leaving.
Brown is the classic case of “The Accidental Hero”.
Dan Marion and the Dolphins lost Super Bowl XIX (19) in 1984 to the Joe Montana led SF 49ers, 38-16.
That’s what they say this week at least!
The hot stat of the day seems to be that the No. 1 defense won 9 of the10 Super Bowls that it has played in. Of course, what that means is that there have been 27 Super Bowls where the No. 1 defense missed the game entirely, so maybe defense doesn’t win championships after all! If someone had the time and the data base, it be interesting to compare the Super Bowl winners and losers by their defense & offensive team rankings for the season.
This thread made us all crack up at work. It’s just the kind of thing you can imagine the non-football fan wife saying to her husband who’s the rabid Raiders fan.
By what metric are we using to determine “best defense”? Is it fewest yards allowed, fewest points allowed? Each are valid, but both are flawed.
And a football team only plays 16 games, so one fluke game can skew the stats quite easily and make a good defense look average.
Teams that win a lot tend to give up a lot of passing yards because they are usually ahead most of the game and the team trying to catch up has to pass. And if your opponent is passing a lot, more often than not, it will eventually hit you for some long gains (as was the case with Tampa Bay).
Also a team with bad special teams may not give up a lot of yards on defense because it keeps giving up good field position to the opponents so they don’t have to go far to score.
BobT, I’m doing this from memory, so could be wrong, but I think the for Bucs:
- Fewest points allowed.
- Fewest passing yards allowed.
- Lowest opposing QB rating (48.6?)
- Lowest pass percentage allowed (50.9%)
- Lowest third down conversion percentage.
- Most interceptions (team).
- Most interceptions (individual - tie: Brian Kelly)
- Defensive TDs scored.
- Four Pro Bowl starters (Simeon Rice, Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Derrick Brooks)
- NFL Defensive Player of the Year - Derrick Brooks
- Tied individual record for most defensive TDs in a season, Derrick Brooks - 3 interceptions for TD, one Fumble Return. Is a record for linebacker. Breaks the record if his Super Bowl TD is included.
- Most likely to make the opposing Head Coach get fired (only slightly kidding on this one: Mornhinweg, Mariucci, LeBeau all lost to the Bucs this year… Dick Jauron did too, but I don’t think he was fired, he only should have been)
BobT, as **ShibbOleth[\b] said, no matter how you calculate “#1 defence”, the Bucs qualify this year.
And if “good” means “able to function well against the Bucs”, then Garcia, Vick, Culpepper and Favre aren’t good quarterbacks, either.
-lv
Well that would explain why I can’t remember…
From stories I’ve read, when they talk of #1 offense and #1 defense they are referring solely to points scored or allowed.
For the record, Tampa Bay did not have the lowest third down conversion percentage. They were actually third, behind Philadelphia and Carolina.
Slackers. 
Actually, IIRC, the statistic that Al Michaels gave was that, in Superbowls where a top-three ranked defence has faced a top-three ranked offence, the defence has won 9 out 10 times. Not quite the same thing.