As former NFL head coach Herm Edwards once said, you play to win the game when it comes to sports. So, then why is a former All-Pro Raiders wide receiver claiming that his former coach sabotaged his own team in Super Bowl XXXVII?
We're not sure why this is coming out right now. But, ten years after the Buccaneers beat the Raiders 48-21 in Super Bowl XXXVII, Tim Brown has come out and said that the game was such a blowout because Raiders coach Bill Callahan basically set his own team up to fail. During a recent interview on SiriusXM NFL Radio, Brown said that, just 36 hours before the game was set to kick off, Callahan decided to change the Raiders attack from a run-heavy strategy to a pass-happy strategy, which is what caused Raiders center Barret Robbins to skip town and head to Mexico for a few days in the days leading up to the big game. He believes Callahan did it on purpose to cause the Raiders to lose.
"We get our game plan for victory on Monday," Brown said, "and the game plan says we're gonna run the ball. We averaged 340 [pounds] on the offensive line, they averaged 280 [on the defensive line]. We're all happy with that, everybody is excited."
But, just four days later, Brown says Callahan completely changed his thinking and, as a result, changed the entire game plan around.
"We all called it sabotage...because Callahan and [Tampa Bay coach Jon] Gruden were good friends," Brown said. "And Callahan had a big problems 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…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…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."
Wow. Those are some major, major allegations by Brown. It'd be one thing for him to say that the Raiders weren't prepared or that Callahn should have done a few things differently before and during the game. But, to say that the guy basically handed the Bucs the game? Yikes. Expect to hear more on this story soon.
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[via Pro Football Talk]
