SaintNik

Gruden has gotten an overwhelming amount of credit for the team he inherited from the Dungy regime. The defense was basically intact and most of the core of the offense was as well. Of course he should be given credit regardless, but, to what extent. Sure, he brought Chucky ball to the bay and installed his offense. Some might even say that he was only able to run the offense in 1st gear with the personnel he had. Has that group improved this offseason that much? The loss of the #1s will eventually catch up to them, maybe not this year, but, in the following few years with the core group of that defense moving on, it will. Teams around the league will at some point find the weaknesses and others will exploit them. The Saints swept them last year. That favor could be returned this year even though I expect at least a split. Let's hold up on annoiting the guru as a savior until he has a few years of his system in place with his players. That is why this year Haslett should be judged more so than in the past three. He now has the core group of his coaches and players in his system now in the 4th year. It is time to win now. No excuses about being in the toughest division in the league where the defending super bowl champ resides. Saints teams of the past had that problem for years with the 9ers and rams. I do think Gruden and Haslett are both good coaches, no doubt. Let's just see how many consecutive killer seasons he has where he is at. How many championships did he win with the raiders? Did they get further with or without him?

LordOfEntropy

I\'m going to go out on a limb and say something that will piss a lot of people off....

The biggest thing Gruden brought to the Bucs was innnate knowledge of Oakland\'s system. I remember reading a quote after the Superbowl saying (paraphrase) \"man, every play they ran against us, we covered in practice - it was like we already had their gameplan\".

They beat the snot out of a good team, absolutely humiliated them. And I certainly won\'t deny that they are a damn good team themselves. But overall I believe Chuckie\'s biggest asset was knowing inside and out how the Raiders operated, and they just happened to play Oakland in the Superbowl. Had that been a different team in the big one, I believe it would have been a much closer game.

Overall, though, I believe Gruden got them over a hump that Dungie would have never accomplished. Though Dungie was a master of D, just never did anything on O, nothing he tried ever worked. Years and years of it.... Gruden takes the same guys, goes all they way. You\'ve got to give him credit for that.

We\'ve got our work cut out for us this season.

can anyone help me id this tune? it goes thwap thwap boom tch boom tch boom tch.

Qui a laissez sortir les chiens!

coastalkid

The number one thing Gruden brings to any team is chemistry. He is a players coach. He unites his players into a us against the world attitude and EVERYONE BELIEVES. He is a master motivator and a enthusiastic type of guy. Players like to play for this type of coach and will usually overachieve for him. You are right in the fact that his defense was pretty much set and the offense was as it was. Grouden didn\'t really change or improve anything from Dungy regeime all he did was unite the team into a team and they all played together for a common goal. THUS THAT DAMNED RING!

subguy

LOE I do agree that helped them a whole bunch. Bucs offense is certainly nothing special. We keep discussing us beating them twice. It was the same thing we did to the Rams and the Rams did to the Bucs. We kept blitzing. It throws off their game immensely and they have a weak running game. It is about matchups and we matched up well with the Rams and the Bucs. When our Defense pressures we always do well. I think we were lacking the upfront speed and were so weak in the Dback that we couldn\'t really bring a safety blitz etc......

Don't want em to get your goat don't show em where it's hid.