We Call It Riding The Gravy Train

Thank God it's a big bandwagon because everyone is jumping on this week. First, ESPN ranks the Buccaneers at #8 and gives them a huge vote of confidence:

There's absolutely no reason for the Bucs not to finish on an eight-game win streak. They're halfway there and have four subpar opponents left on the schedule. If the Pack doesn't take care of business, the Bucs could sneak into that second NFC spot.

Well, I don't know about that. The Packers would really have to let the bottom fall out for the Bucs to overtake them and their upcoming opponents are Oakland, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit. I think they'll be just fine. But it's quite a change in attitude from just four weeks ago when the same guys had both Washington and New Orleans ranked higher than the Bucs and they saw little hope in the season. But it's ok. Like I said, there's plenty of room on the bandwagon. Forgiven.

ESPN.com even did a front page piece on Joey Galloway and Ike Hilliard and how their leadership has helped bring the team back from last season. But to be fair, the author, Jeffri Chadiha, has been giving the Bucs good press all season long including training camp, so he's already firmly entrenched. But when was the last time we saw a Bucs article on the ESPN.com front page?

And then there's our boys at The Times. I wonder how many times they've written and re-written their respective "Gruden Gets Fired" articles that are undoubtedly sitting on their hard drives, getting them just right with the perfect balance of bile and self-congratulation to let the world know that they hated him all along. Whenever Gruden made a questionable call in a game, they would go back and insert that little tidbit into their masterwork and just wait for the end of the season. Oh, how it must have hurt to pen an article titled "In Jon we trust" and declare unconditionally that Gruden should stick around.

Gruden has saved his job. He has done enough, and his team has won enough, to silence even the harshest of his critics. If this season has served as testimony that Gruden is still the coach for the Bucs, then Sunday's victory over the Saints seems like the closing argument.

Maybe Gary Shelton has resolved his bitterness issues over the firing of Tony Dungy and decided to embrace being a Bucs fan regardless of his personal feelings toward the coach. Or maybe the evidence is so overwhelmingly in Gruden's favor that anyone with a sense of logic can finally see that he is doing a good job. Most likely, Shelton has realized that his four-year smear campaign has been ineffective and, like a politician, has decided to flip-flop and pander to the public-at-large. Whatever. Forgiven. In the spirit of the holidays, everyone is forgiven.