Former Oakland Raiders receiver Tim Brown is not backing down from his earlier comments that Bill Callahan drastically changed the Raiders game plan in the days before Super Bowl XXXVII to give the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and coach Jon Gruden a better chance at winning the Super Bowl.
Tim Brown: Bill Callahan knew what he was doing
Tim Brown expanded on his claim that Bill Callahan knowingly changed the Raiders offensive game plan before Super Bowl XXXVII to help Jon Gruden and the Buccaneers beat Oakland.
Kirby Lee-US PRESSWIRE
After saying earlier that Callahan “hated the Raiders,” Brown joined NBC Sports Network’s Pro Football Talk on Tuesday to clarify his earlier comments to Sirius XM’s NFL Radio. Pro Football Talk host Erik Kuselias went straight to the heart of the matter, asking Brown point blank if he thought Callahan was incompetent or had intentionally sabotaged his team. Brown, who spent five seasons working with Callahan in Oakland, reiterated his earlier feelings.
“I can’t say the man was incompetent, because he was far from that,” Brown told Kuselias. “Any decisions you make, you have to know that there will be positive outcomes and negative outcomes. I don’t think that [Callahan] was incompetent. That’s not who Bill Callahan is. He’s a very good football coach.”
When asked whether he or any of his teammates noticed or felt like Callahan was sabotaging the Raiders chances, Brown recalled the scene in the Raiders locker room after the Buccaneers’ dominating, 48-21, victory.
"You had guys sitting around the locker room, talking about exactly that. 'Why in the world?,'" Brown recalled. "We were just trying to find a reason why that would happen. Why would you change the gameplan so close to the game if you know that the negative repercussion from that could cost you the game?"
Brown explained that the Raiders installed a pass-happy offensive plan for the game after a week of practice that featured a run-heavy attack. Brown insists Callahan knew it would cost the Raiders the game.
"I would feel better about this situation, almost, not that I'd want it to happen, but if it happened that way ... thinking that the guy had no idea what he was doing," Brown said. "I had been with the guy for five years at that point and the one thing you can't put with Bill Callahan is incompetence."
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