Bill Callahan ‘Sabotaged’ Raiders In Super Bowl Xxxvii

[Kosar_For_President]

Former Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders (and Tampa Bay Buccaneers) wide receiver/return specialist Tim Brown is among the 15 modern-era finalists in 2013 for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The sixth overall pick of the 1988 NFL draft has an impressive résumé, too.

 

Over 17 seasons, Brown caught 1,094 passes for 14,934 yards and 100 touchdowns, ranking in the top three in all three statistical categories at the time of his retirement. Brown was a dangerous return specialist, leading the NFL in return yards as a rookie and scoring four touchdowns on returns during his 17-year career. Nearly 10 seasons after leaving the organization, and despite the rules allowing for greater success in the passing game, Brown remains the Raiders' all-time leader in receptions, receiving yards and total touchdowns (104).

 

Brown is a nine-time Pro Bowler, including seven as a receiver and two as a kick returner, and was an All-Pro kick returner as a rookie and an All-Pro receiver after leading the NFL in reception in 1997.

 

If there's one thing that Brown's Hall of Fame résumé lacks, it's a Super Bowl ring. The Raiders reached the Super Bowl once during Brown's 16 seasons with the franchise, advancing to Super Bowl XXXVII following the 2002 season. The Raiders lost 48-21 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were coached by Jon Gruden, Oakland's head coach from 1998-2001.

 

Brown pins that loss on Gruden's replacement, Bill Callahan, who allegedly changed the game plan less than 48 hours before the Super Bowl.

"We get our game plan for victory on Monday, and the game plan says we’re gonna run the ball,” Brown said last Saturday on SiriusXM NFL Radio (via Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com). “We averaged 340 (pounds) on the offensive line, they averaged 280 (on the defensive line). We’re all happy with that, everybody is excited. (We) tell Charlie Garner, ‘Look, you’re not gonna get too many carries, but at the end of the day we’re gonna get a victory. Tyrone Wheatley, Zack Crockett, let’s get ready to blow this thing up'."

 

At this point, we should mention that the Buccaneers led the NFL in total defense and scoring defense in 2002, allowing just 252.8 yards of total offense and 12.3 points per game. That undersized defensive front yielded 97.1 rushing yards per game, which ranked fifth in the NFL that regular season, and the team was first in passing yards allowed per game and per play. In the postseason, the Buccaneers held the San Francisco 49ers to 228 yards of offense (58 on the ground) and the Philadelphia Eagles to 312 yards of offense, including 72 rushing yards. Oakland gained just 269 yards in Super Bowl XXXVII and only had 19 yards on 11 rushing attempts.

 

According to ESPN's Chris Mortensen, fellow ESPN analyst Jon Ritchie, a fullback on the 2002 Raiders, confirms Brown's statements that what they practiced during the week was not what was called during the game, a point he has made on television in his years as an analyst. The decision to not run the ball may have also been affected by the late-week disappearance of center Barrett Robbins, a Pro Bowl and All-Pro selection that season who stopped taking medication for his depression. Robbins returned to the team before the game, but was inactive and replaced by Adam Treu, who had played just two snaps on offense during the 2002 season, according to official playing-time documents.

 

Brown, however, suggests that Callahan may have thrown the game out of loyalty to Gruden and a dislike of the Raiders, who would fire him following a 4-12 season in 2003.

 

"We all called it sabotage...because Callahan and Gruden were good friends," Brown said. "And Callahan had a big problem with the Raiders, you know, hated the Raiders. You know, only came because Gruden made him come. Literally walked off the field on us a couple of times during the season when he first got there, the first couple years. So really he had become someone who was part of the staff but we just didn’t pay him any attention. Gruden leaves, he becomes the head coach....It’s hard to say that the guy sabotaged the Super Bowl. You know, can you really say that? That can be my opinion, but I can’t say for a fact that that’s what his plan was, to sabotage the Super Bowl. He hated the Raiders so much that he would sabotage the Super Bowl so his friend can win the Super Bowl. That’s hard to say, because you can’t prove it.

 

"But the facts are what they are, that less than 36 hours before the game we changed our game plan. And we go into that game absolutely knowing that we have no shot. That the only shot we had if Tampa Bay didn’t show up."

 

Callahan would spend four seasons at the University of Nebraska before returning to the NFL in 2008 as the assistant head coach/offensive line coach with the New York Jets. Callahan is currently the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach with the Dallas Cowboys.

[The Gipper]

I heard a teammate of Brown's on the radio this morning basically refute Tim Brown's whole statement.

 

He said that the game change was made necessary AFTER the disappearance of the team's center. The center was the guy that made all the blocking signals for the whole Offensive line. After he went AWOL, yes, the team had to make changes and adjustments to the game plan because they had no one but their long snapper to hike the ball, and they had to dumb down the game plan for that.

Also, the team got behind by a wide margin quickly....so the idea of running the ball to control the clock, which was the game plan, had to be thrown out the window.

 

In other words: Tim Brown is full of crap.

[Browns149]

I heard a teammate of Brown's on the radio this morning basically refute Tim Brown's whole statement.

 

He said that the game change was made necessary AFTER the disappearance of the team's center. The center was the guy that made all the blocking signals for the whole Offensive line. After he went AWOL, yes, the team had to make changes and adjustments to the game plan because they had no one but their long snapper to hike the ball, and they had to dumb down the game plan for that.

Also, the team got behind by a wide margin quickly....so the idea of running the ball to control the clock, which was the game plan, had to be thrown out the window.

 

In other words: Tim Brown is full of crap.

I don't know what story is the truth, But Tim Brown actaully quoted the center. Someone must be MISREMEMBERING. I love that word,thanks Roger

[The Gipper]

I don't know what story is the truth, But Tim Brown actaully quoted the center. Someone must be MISREMEMBERING. I love that word,thanks Roger

 

The center was the guy that disappeared before the biggest game of his career and was diagnosed being bi-polar among other things..,

Sorry, I question this whole story.

The HC of a team sabotages his own team, because he doesn't like that team, and because he likes the other team's HC?

 

Falderol.

[BadNewsBrowns]

Jerry Rice says he agrees with Tim Brown.

 

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/22/jerry-rice-agrees-with-tim-brown-bill-callahan-sabotaged-us/

 

 

Jerry Rice agrees with Tim Brown: Bill Callahan sabotaged us

Posted by Michael David Smith on January 22, 2013, 4:59 PM EST

Rice and Brown Getty Images

 

The bizarre controversy over whether former Raiders coach Bill Callahan sabotaged the team by changing the game plan at the last minute has taken another surprising turn, as Jerry Rice has come forward to say he sides with his former teammate Tim Brown in believing that Callahan wanted to lose.

 

Rice, who was on the Raiders team that lost Super Bowl XXXVII to the Buccaneers, said on ESPN that Callahan disliked his players, disliked his team, and was willing to let his old boss, then-Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden, beat him.

 

“For some reason — and I don’t know why — Bill Callahan did not like me,” Rice said. “In a way, maybe because he didn’t like the Raiders, he decided, ‘Maybe we should sabotage this a little bit and let Jon Gruden go out and win this one.’”

 

For Rice, a universally respected player who was named by NFL Network as the greatest in NFL history, to say that he believes one of his former coaches actively wanted to lose a Super Bowl is shocking. ESPN’s Trey Wingo stopped Rice and asked him if he realized the magnitude of the accusation that Callahan once threw the Super Bowl. Rice said he understands the weight of his words.

 

“Yeah, I know exactly what I’m saying,” Rice said.

 

Until Brown made his bombshell accusation on Saturday, the biggest controversy to come out of Super Bowl XXXVII was the fact that Raiders center Barrett Robbins abandoned the team the day before the game. Rice blames Callahan for that, too: According to Rice, Robbins was so demoralized by Callahan announcing in a team meeting that he was going to call mostly pass plays that Robbins decided to bail on the Super Bowl.

 

“With Barrett, he was frustrated, like, ‘You cannot do this to us at the last second.’ Maybe that’s why he decided to not show up,” Rice said.

 

I have all the respect in the world for Jerry Rice, but blaming Callahan for Robbins’ actions is ridiculous. Robbins is a man who has struggled with mental illness for most of his life. A man who struggles with mental illness is dealing with things much more profound than a coach changing his game plan. Does Rice also blame Callahan for the legal and personal problems that Robbins has had in the decade since his NFL career ended?

 

Rice also doesn’t seem to accurately remember how that Super Bowl went down. In his ESPN appearance, Rice said Callahan called on the Raiders “to throw the ball over 60 times.” But the Raiders didn’t throw the ball 60 times or even 50 times. They threw 44 times — exactly three more times than they had thrown the ball the week before, when they won the AFC Championship Game.

 

And that brings us to the strangest part of all this criticism of Callahan: Brown and Rice are insisting that Callahan sabotaged the team by implementing a pass-first offensive game plan. But the Raiders had been a passing team all season: They led the NFL in passing yards that season while ranking 18th in the league in rushing yards and 23rd in the league in rushing attempts.

 

In other words, Callahan called a lot of passes in the Super Bowl because it was calling a lot of passes that had led them to the Super Bowl in the first place. For Brown and Rice to suggest that Callahan was throwing the Super Bowl because he continued to call a lot of passes just as he had all season long is absolutely ridiculous.

[The Gipper]

Does anyone think that the bizarre timing of this accusation....10 years later....is going to cause Tim Brown to lose a lot of votes in his Hall of Fame bid, which comes up next week?

[miktoxic]

i'll believe jerry rice and tim brown over bill fuggin callahan any day.

 

one center doe not dictate a whole running scheme. and if their only backup to a 'bi-polar' (my ass) center was their long-snapper then shame on them.