Tampa Bay’s defense finished the 2008 season with a top 10 ranking – just barely, thanks to an epic collapse in the month of December that saw the Buccaneers surrender 756 yards rushing (189 avg.) and seven rushing touchdowns after allowing only 1,145 yards (95.4 avg.) and one rushing touchdown through the first 12 weeks of the season. The Bucs rush defense finished 19th (118.8 avg.) in the NFL, while the pass defense ranked fourth (187.3 avg.).

Four straight losses to end the season – with the defense as the main culprit – was not an ideal way to send off defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, who coached his last game in Tampa Bay and will be heading off to the University of Tennessee to become the school’s defensive coordinator and work with his son, Lane, who was hired as the head coach in November.

“I’m going to leave tomorrow,” Kiffin said. “They are sending a private jet up here tomorrow. I better hurry. I don’t have anything packed. I said, ‘Lane, what are you doing?’ Let me catch my breath.”

When asked if Kiffin had even bought a place to live up in Tennessee, he replied, “Probably on a couch in the facility. I don’t know if I have one. If I don’t, I better get one in my contract.”

Kiffin’s departure to Tennessee has been at the center of speculation surrounding the collapse of the Bucs’ defense in December. Reports on CBS and NFL Network have suggested that Kiffin’s handling of his departure has caused some dissention at One Buccaneer Place. Although the players stand by the notion that talk of Kiffin’s departure, which was publicly announced after the team’s 38-23 loss at Carolina where the Panthers rushed for 299 yards and four touchdowns, was not a distraction, the stats piled up by Tampa Bay’s four foes this past month suggest otherwise.

Kiffin was asked if he would have done anything differently in hindsight regarding his announcement.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kiffin said. “I did think back to Mike Holmgren in Seattle. I said to myself when Mike announced this was his last year, because Mike is a heck of a football coach and I’ve got a lot of respect for him. You think back and maybe he shouldn’t have announced that at the time. I didn’t know. Like I said, I would have liked to have had my choice, but there was so much speculation I tried to put it to rest. In the same sense, I don’t know if it was the right thing to do or not. I really don’t. That’s hard to look back at that.”

Including 2008, the Bucs have produced a top 10 defense in 11 of 13 seasons with Kiffin at the helm. His coaching legacy will live on in Tampa Bay as defensive backs coach Raheem Morris, who was hired by Kiffin as a quality control coach in 2002, will replace Kiffin as the Bucs’ defensive coordinator.

“They’ll bounce back,” Kiffin said of the defense. “Raheem is very enthusiastic person, a very likable person. He’ll be good with the press. He’s got a lot of enthusiasm. But that’s not why he got the job. There are coaches like that, but they can’t really coordinate. They may be excellent position coaches, but Raheem – he’s ready. He deserves it. He’s ready. He can do it. I know good coaches when I see them.

“I saw that with Mike Tomlin. Sometimes you can catch it in the interview, and I’m not saying they’re going to get there right away. But you can sometimes tell. I could tell that with Raheem the minute he was with us back when he was 26 years old. They’re in good shape.”

In addition to Morris, defensive line coach Todd Wash and linebackers coach Gus Bradley, whose contract is up in January, are expected to stay on in Tampa Bay. Both were Kiffin hires.

“You take pride in that type of thing, but they were good coaches when they got here,” Kiffin said. “They were pretty good to start with. They are excellent now. They are excellent, excellent coaches. These guys are not just okay coaches. There are a lot of coaches in the NFL that are good coaches and there are some that I wouldn’t say are that good of coaches. These guys are special coaches.”

Tampa Bay’s special coaches need more special players. Kiffin indicated the defense has some star players in middle linebacker Barrett Ruud and defensive end Gaines Adams, who was last year’s first-round pick. Although Adams underachieved in 2008, perhaps in part due to some injuries, Kiffin is a big believer in the Bucs’ leading sacker, who had a career-high 6.5 QB captures.

“I think he’ll be outstanding, I really do,” Kiffin said. “Sometimes they come on their first year. Sometimes they come on in the second year. Sometimes they come on in the third year. If they are not there by the third year, maybe you look back. But I would be shocked if he doesn’t – all because of his attitude. He works hard. I think Gaines got frustrated. I think he gets frustrated. He has to learn not to get frustrated. Maybe the first two games he doesn’t have a sack. Let’s just say he doesn’t – worst case scenario. Just get to the third game. Maybe you are going to get three in the third game. He’s very talented. He’ll be fine. He really will. He’ll have the same coach with him and that would be good for him. This was his first year with Todd. He’s had two coaches in two different years. Gaines will still be outstanding. I would be shocked if he wasn’t.”

Kiffin does concede that Adams and the defensive line must do a better job in 2009 rushing the passer and stuffing the run.

“They need to have a better rush and sometimes you know you need to blitz a little bit more,” Kiffin said. “It was surprising, we had two really good blitzes up the last two games that were really excellent and then they still got the completions. It’s a combination of both things.

“We didn’t play the run game. We went all those weeks with only one rushing touchdown. Guys just got a little lax in their gap control and you can’t do that. Yesterday, early it was good at times and then in the end … usually in the hot weather like that the other team wears out. It looked like we wore down a little bit.”

As he left One Buccaneer Place for the last time on Monday, Kiffin said that his decision to leave Tampa Bay where he has coached since 1996, produced number one-ranked defenses in 2002 and 2005 and won Super Bowl XXXVII still hasn’t sunk in.

“No, not really,” Kiffin said. “Yesterday I was in there talking defense for the last time. I said, ‘Guys, I told you we were going to be in here Monday morning. We wanted to meet Monday morning for the Vikings game. It’s tough. It’s really tough. It’s really, really hard. It’s always harder when you have really good guys, good people, good players.”

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