By Pete Williams

When the New York Jets visit the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, there won’t be one-tenth the interest that there was the last time the Jets came to town.

It was late September 2000. Keyshawn Johnson had just joined the Buccaneers after a bitter departure from New York. The Jets were in a weird place, with Bill Parcells having resigned the previous offseason and Bill Belichick turning down the job after initially accepting it, bolting for New England.

That left Al Groh as the Jets’ head coach. Groh, who had bombed as a head coach at Wake Forest early in his career, was best known as a longtime Parcells/Belichick assistant.

I knew little about Groh at the time, but fortunately Keyshawn was willing to bring all of us in the Tampa Bay media up to speed. He began the week ripping Groh, the Jets, and especially pint-sized wide receiver Wayne Chrebet. It was epic. Each day at the old One Buc Place Keyshawn staged an impromptu news conference to reiterate his stance, just to make sure we understood. As the week progressed, the New York tabloids began sending reinforcements. Keyshawn was happy to repeat himself, famously referring to Chrebet as a “flashlight,” himself a “star.”

The Bucs were off to a 3-0 start following a loss the previous season in the NFC title game and looked like favorites to play at home in the Super Bowl. The locker room included Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Derrick Brooks, Shaun King, and of course Tony Dungy – all now national TV types. (Trent Dilfer, perhaps the best future TV analyst, had departed the previous season.) But the biggest quote machine was Johnson, who all but guaranteed a victory.

Groh, if nothing else, knows how to game-plan defense. He shut down Keyshawn, holding him to one catch on a one-yard shovel pass. The Jets won in the waning seconds when – who else? – Chrebet hauled in the winning touchdown. The Bucs lost their next three and rallied to make the playoffs, where they lost to Philadelphia.

After the Flashlight Game, Groh said little at Raymond James Stadium, but dropped this line: “Sometimes forty flashlights shine brighter than one star.”

In twenty years of covering sports, I’ve never seen a player look so foolish. This Al Groh guy looked pretty smart. I don’t think it registered at the time that we shared an alma mater, the University of Virginia. Less than three months later, after just one (9-7) season as an NFL head coach, Groh resigned to succeed the retiring George Welsh at U.Va.

Four years later, I was writing THE DRAFT, a book that chronicled the year-long talent evaluation process leading up the NFL Draft. Since U.Va. had a lot of top draft-eligible players (Heath Miller, Chris Canty, among them), I visited Groh in his office in Charlottesville. On a shelf he had one of the Jets team-logo flashlights he issued players after the Bucs game. I mentioned I had covered that game and we spent a few interesting minutes reliving it.

U.Va. fired Groh two weeks ago after nine seasons, including three losing campaigns in the last four. Groh produced a lot of NFL talent, but struggled to win college games with it. These days, I wonder if Keyshawn Johnson wasn’t right. Al Groh is a terrific defensive mind, one of the best at coaching the linebacker position. But given his tenure at Wake, Virginia, and the Jets, it’s fair to say he was not head coach material.

But for one afternoon, he looked like the best head coach in the NFL.

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