FAB 5. SR’s Buc Shots

• I hope you enjoyed a little Bucs history in this edition of SR’s Fab 5. There will be plenty of current Bucs insight and analysis in the coming months as the 2018 team prepares for the regular season, but I wanted to mix it up this week a bit with a look back at the 1998 season and how that quirky year, which reminded me of Tampa Bay’s 2017 season, drastically changed the course of the franchise. The Bucs defense continued to get better as quarterback Trent Dilfer continued to get worse the next season.

This topic allowed me to reconnect with two of my favorite, go-to guys in the Bucs locker room when I needed the blunt truth and no B.S. As they did years ago, three-time Pro Bowl center Tony Mayberry and defensive end Chidi Ahanotu delivered again for me, and I hope you enjoyed their analysis on Dilfer and the 1998 season.

In my conversation with Mayberry, he told me how glad he was to have played in his era from 1990-99 when there wasn’t any social media to have to deal with.

“I don’t envy these young guys now with their social media and their stances,” Mayberry said. “Hey man, we were just a bunch of dudes in a sweaty little locker room back then down by the airport trying to get it done, you know?”

I have always loved Mayberry’s candor.

There was one more interesting aspect of Ahanotu’s thoughts on the ’98 campaign that I wanted to share with you. He only played in four games that year due to a dislocated shoulder, but was given the franchise tag by general manager Rich McKay during the 1999 offseason and stayed in Tampa Bay through 2000.

“If we make the playoffs that year in 1998 and have success with me being injured, I don’t think I ever would have been named the franchise player the next year,” Ahanotu said. “I think the fact that we had an off year and I was hurt … see, the coaches knew how important I was. A lot of the things I did weren’t on the stats sheet. The Bucs would have said, ‘See, we did good without him,’ and probably might have let me walk [in free agency]. So I think the team not making the playoffs that year actually helped me a little bit.”

Ahanotu had 31 sacks during his first stint in Tampa Bay before returning as a defensive tackle in 2004 where he recorded 3.5 more QB captures. Last year, Bucs Pro Bowl defensive tackle Gerald McCoy surpassed Ahanotu’s 34.5 career sacks and moved into fifth place on the Bucs’ all-time sack list with 35.5 sacks in Tampa Bay.

Former Bucs DE Chidi Ahanotu – Photo by: Getty Images

• One more interesting note regarding Ahanotu. I was right smack in the middle of the controversial statements he made about not having faith in Dilfer after the 1999 opening day loss to the New York Giants in which two of Dilfer’s four turnovers led to 14 points for the G-Men. I was one of a handful of reporters to be speaking to Ahanotu at his locker and asked him the question if he still believed in Dilfer. There were no TV cameras present at the time – nor were there cell phones that had any type of video recorder on them back in the day.

In fact, I may have been the only reporter to have his recorder on at the time, and I immediately put the story up on BucMag.com, which was PewterReport.com’s predecessor. Back then, the St. Petersburg Times and the rival Tampa Tribune would often embargo their stories online until midnight after the newspaper went to press for fear that one paper knew what the other was going to report.

That gave BucMag.com and myself a huge advantage at the time and greatly helped grow our web traffic as we were typically the only media-credentialed Bucs-related website at the time that posted news immediately in the afternoon. It was big stories and breaking news like this that prompted the Times and Tribune to stop embargoing their stories until later in the evening and publish them right away as news happened.

I remember getting a call from Reggie Roberts, who was the Bucs’ brash public relations director at the time, after we broke the Ahanotu story. Roberts was in full spin control mode as he suggested that Ahanotu’s quotes were off the record and not meant to be reported. I said that I had got them on the record, which prompted him to retort that I must have dubiously and secretly recorded him.

Ahanotu and I had a great working relationship. He knew exactly what he was doing and what he was saying and definitely wanted his criticism of Dilfer out there in public in an attempt to hold the Bucs offense to a higher standard, which had become problematic in the years Tony Dungy was the head coach.

I fired back at Roberts, saying, “Well how could it be off the record when I had my recorder was right in Chidi’s face and the little red light was on?”

Of course there wasn’t any comeback from that, and Roberts’ attempt to get me to squash the story didn’t work. I held my ground and insisted that Ahanotu’s quotes were fair game because they were on the record, something Ahanotu confirmed to me the next day.

• This weekend is an excellent time time to get caught up on the latest Pewter Nation Podcasts. I have conveniently linked the last two podcasts here to make it easy for you to listen and get caught up on all of our insight and analysis from the OTAs this offseason. Get ready to be informed and entertained by Mark Cook, Trevor Sikkema and myself with nearly two  hours of Bucs analysis and insight.

We taped our most recent Pewter Nation Podcast on Thursday, June 7 after the Bucs’ last OTA session. Here is a link to the new podcast – Episode 77: Final Thoughts On OTAs

You can click here to listen to our previous Pewter Nation Podcast – Episode 76: Worried About Winston?

The popularity of the Pewter Nation Podcast continues to grow. In addition to listening to the Pewter Nation Podcasts on PewterReport.com you can also subscribe to the free podcasts at PodBean by clicking here and on SoundCloud by clicking here. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode.

• Bucs tight end Cameron Brate was asked by PewterReport.com’s Mark Cook if the players ever talked about the fate of head coach Dirk Koetter and general manager Jason Licht and how Tampa Bay needs to win this year or there could be regime change in 2019.

“No, it’s not,” Brate said. “It’s just something that’s felt. It goes without saying. You can kind of feel it really. You see the reports or whatever on ESPN and things like that, but it doesn’t really need to be talked about. Everyone kind of knows the deal.”

• Do you want up-to-the-minute news and observations from next week’s Bucs mandatory mini-camp, which is open to the media? Make sure you become one of the 29,400 Twitter followers of @PewterReport. If you want updates from Bucs press conferences, Bucs OTAs this offseason and new PewterReport.com story notifications be sure to follow us on Twitter and help us grow to 30,000. To follow @PewterReport on Twitter please click here, and to follow us on Facebook please click here.

• And finally, I think there was a huge missed opportunity by the Philadelphia Eagles this week in declining to send more than a small contingent of players and coaches to the White House to be recognized for their Super Bowl win in February. Because so many Eagles objected to going to see President Donald Trump due to his inflammatory rhetoric about some NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem in protest of some minorities being killed and abused at the hands of some police officers, who use excessive force, Trump uninvited the Eagles at the last minute.

Trump continues to make life difficult for the NFL with his constant use of Twitter and his bully pulpit to sound off about the National Anthem, and the Eagles had an opportunity to perhaps put an end to that. Philadelphia didn’t have a player kneel in protest last year, although I believe Malcolm Jenkins and a few others might have raised a fist instead. I would have liked to see Jenkins and defensive end Chris Long, an outspoken critic of Trump, go to the White House with the entire team and ask for a face-to-face meeting as a precondition for showing up for the White House recognition ceremony.

Trump loves to make deals and loves attention, and I bet he would have bitten on that hook. At the very least, if he wouldn’t meet Jenkins, Long and some other Eagles face-to-face in a closed door meeting to hear the NFL players’ side of their protests in an attempt to have the President gain some understanding, then the Eagles players could have run to the press with the fact that he wouldn’t even listen to them. Then they could have declined the trip en masse and that would have made Trump look even worse.

Despite not being a career politician, Trump is a savvy guy. He probably knew the downside of declining a meeting, as it would reaffirm the belief by some that he is intolerant, so the Eagles could have very well forced that meeting to take place.

Eagles S Malcolm Jenkins and DE Chris Long – Photo by: Getty Images

Bucs defensive end Vinny Curry, who was on Philadelphia’s Super Bowl team last year, wasn’t planning on going to the White House, and told Tampa Bay Times reporter Rick Stroud: “What are you going to do? It’s not going to change anything. We can talk about it until we’re blue in the face. Donald Trump is not going to call and say, ‘Hey, come on over.’ He’s just not.”

I disagree. A face-to-face meeting with Trump could change the landscape of events surrounding the protests that a few of the NFL players have engaged in.

Hey, a face-to-face meeting with Kim Kardashian prompted Trump to commute the sentence of Alice Johnson, an African-American, who was given an extraordinarily long prison sentence for first-time drug use nearly 20 years ago. Trump also pardoned former African-American heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson after former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama failed to do so.

In my opinion there’s nothing wrong with talking and listening, especially face-to-face. I would love nothing more than to see players like Long, Jenkins and Colin Kaepernick suggest a face-to-face meeting Trump with offseason to discuss this issue, try to defuse it and perhaps bring some understanding to the situation. If it solves nothing, then it solves nothing. But why not try? Before action can occur, dialogue is usually needed.

If Kardashian can get Johnson pardoned, then what could the Eagles have accomplished? We’ll never know because of a missed opportunity.