Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Raheem Morris Deserves Almost as Much Praise as Jon Gruden

For all the "love" that is consistently showered on Jon Gruden for his success with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Raheem Morris should receive twice as much.

Tony Dungy had built the team into a masterpiece, but the Bucs fell just short time and time again. In his first year with the team, Gruden took them to the only Super Bowl win in franchise history.

That was the climax, and the rest was just a slow deterioration of a team that drafted fairly poorly, despite striking gold on a couple of occasions.

The Buccaneers entered their Week 14 showdown with the Carolina Panthers tied for first place in the division at 9-3. That ultimately began Gruden's comeuppance, a four-game losing skid to close out the season and miss the playoffs.

Gruden inherited a golden franchise. Morris was handed the dregs.

The ending of the 2008 season, in my eyes, was just the beginning of the 3-13 season that followed under Morris. To turn the Bucs from that to a 10-6 team in contention for a playoff spot is incredible.

Of course, it will only really be incredible if the trend continues.

The way the Bucs are building, though, that appears very likely. It's no secret that teams that build through the draft are the ones that contend for titles the most consistently. Thus far, eight of Morris' 15 draft picks have made an impact on the team.

In Gruden's first two years, he had two big picks: Jermaine Phillips in the fifth round in '02 and Dewayne White in the second round in '03. Of course, it didn't help much that the Bucs had virtually no early picks in '02, but at that point they had such a strong team they hardly needed them.

Besides, Gruden had a total of 13 draft picks contribute on a high level out of 71 total picks. That's a success rate of 18 percent.

These Buccaneers are very much Morris' team, built through two strong drafts in '09 and '10 with another promising—albeit risky—draft class in '11. If even a few of these picks pan out, Morris will have righted the Buccaneers ship, gotten them out of the ocean and back on the map.

Lest we forget what this game of football is all about, there's a reason I put the word "almost" in the title. Yes, while Morris' work may be worthy of more respect than Gruden's, there's one thing Morris must earn to enter that conversation: a Super Bowl win.