The Score: Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Chris Simms played with a ruptured spleen in his team's loss to the Carolina Panthers yesterday.
Sfvftc's Shot: Bucs quaterback Chris Simms, once and for all, shedded the demeaning 'soft' label with his gritty perfromance yesterday.
The media, Steve Young in partciular and myself stamped Chris Simms as 'soft' or fragile. We formed this characterization based upon his privileged upbringing, his inability to defeat archrival Oklahoma while at Texas and his failure to guide the Longhorns to a national championship.
Yesterday, though, Simms jettisoned that categorization by playing with a ruptured spleen. His head coach, John Gruden, today said, ""He's a tough guy. There's been people out there that have questioned his toughness. Those people hopefully were silenced yesterday." (Quote courtesy of www.sports.yahoo.com & AP & Fred Goodall)
Coach Gruden, I consider myself 'silenced' about Simms' toughness.
Key Play (s):
1. Chris Simms proved his mettle yesterday by playing with a ruptured spleen.
sfvtc .... Simms certainly has proved his mettle but let's not obscure the real truth. He's at best just a moderate quarterback that's still proned to making big mistakes that literally ends up punishing his team. While he's always apologetic for these mistakes it was widely known that Gruden was getting impatient with his young quarterback's errors at the most critical juncture of a game.
He's been in the league long enough to realize that you can't afford to commit
these sort of errors. No doubt he'll return to the game but who can say what type of person he'll be mentally and whether or not his heart will still be in the game.
