The National Football League had played 36 Super Bowls before the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers met to complete the 2002 season. In all those games, no team that had lost on opening day at home had gone on to capture a Vince Lombardi Trophy.
The Buccaneers had opened their 2002 campaign with a home loss to the New Orleans Saints so clearly they were not going to beat the Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII.
Oh yes, they did. And they did it decisively, 48-21.
So, the rule that no team that lost at home on opening day was not as influential in that game as a coach for the Buccaneers that had coached the Raiders in the years prior to that Super Bowl … Jon Gruden. The Buccaneers coach knew the Raiders personnel as well as their own coaches. The Raiders also used some of the same formations and keys in the game that Gruden had schooled his Bucs to defend which prompted Tampa Bay defender John Lynch to say, “We know what they are going to do.”
The Buccaneers also had the better defense and the night before the game, the Raiders starting center, Barret Robbins, suffered a breakdown that landed him in a bar in Tijuana and the Betty Ford clinic for a month after the Raiders loss.
Yes, there were more elements to feed the Buccaneers success than simply a longstanding trend of a team that lost at home on opening day didn’t end their season in a hail of confetti in their team colors.