Jerry Rice agrees with Tim Brown: Bill Callahan sabotaged usPosted by Michael David Smith on January 22, 2013, 4:59 PM EST
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The bizarre controversy over whether former Raiders coach Bill Callahan sabotaged the team before Super Bowl XXXVII by changing the game plan at the last minute has taken another surprising turn: Jerry Rice has come forward to say he sides with his former teammate Tim Brown in believing that Callahan wanted to lose.
Rice, who was on the Raiders team that lost Super Bowl XXXVII to the Buccaneers, said on ESPN that Callahan disliked his players, disliked his team, and was willing to let his old boss, then-Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden, beat him.
“For some reason — and I don’t know why — Bill Callahan did not like me,” Rice said. “In a way, maybe because he didn’t like the Raiders, he decided, ‘Maybe we should sabotage this a little bit and let Jon Gruden go out and win this one.’”
For Rice, a universally respected player who was named in a poll of experts conducted by NFL Network as the greatest player in NFL history, to say that he believes one of his former coaches actively wanted to lose a Super Bowl is shocking. ESPN’s Trey Wingo stopped Rice and asked him if he realized the magnitude of the accusation that Callahan once threw the Super Bowl. Rice said he understands the weight of his words.
“Yeah, I know exactly what I’m saying,” Rice said.
Until Brown made his bombshell accusation on Saturday, the biggest controversy to come out of Super Bowl XXXVII was the fact that Raiders center Barrett Robbins abandoned the team the day before the game. Rice blames Callahan for that, too: According to Rice, Robbins was so demoralized by Callahan announcing in a team meeting that he was going to call mostly pass plays that Robbins decided to bail on the Super Bowl.
“With Barrett, he was frustrated, like, ‘You cannot do this to us at the last second.’ Maybe that’s why he decided to not show up,” Rice said.
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/22/jerry-rice-agrees-with-tim-brown-bill-callahan-sabotaged-us/