SAN DIEGO – Bill Parcells and Al Groh did Keyshawn Johnson a favor, after all.
“I’m sitting here like, ‘Yeah, man, I got a Super Bowl ring,’ ” Keyshawn said. “That’s like my education from USC. Nobody can take that away. No matter what you say. Can’t take that away from me.”
Keyshawn got the ring he never got with the Jets last night when the Bucs beat the Raiders 48-21 in Super Bowl XXXVII.
“Now all I have to do is get me another one, ’cause when you get it once, you want it twice, and when you get it twice you want it three times,” he said.
Keyshawn, dealt because Groh did not want to deal with the distraction of a potential holdout, caught six passes for 69 yards last night.
“For me it was just a matter of just staying patient,” he said. “Being a little anxious in the beginning of the game I let a ball get away from me, just so excited. Once I calmed down a little bit I was able to take advantage of the things that we worked on all week long which was slant routes. We knew that I could get inside of ’em with my body and they wouldn’t be able to cover me and with Brad [Johnson’s] accuracy I have an opportunity to catch some balls.”
He hugged his son on the field after the game. “It’s a dream come true for me,” he said. “I always said in my career that I don’t want to be one of those guys that don’t win a Super Bowl.”
He had vowed to boycott the media after Thursday. It lasted all of three days. “I’ll never let the media dictate what I’m gonna do,” he said. “You think I’m gonna miss this opportunity for those that didn’t want to see me win a Super Bowl? You think I’m gonna miss this opportunity? I won’t.”
He credited Jon Gruden. “Everybody we played in the playoffs is a West Coast system, so our defense has seen this system the last three games,” Keyshawn said.
He wants to play three more years. “I won the Rose Bowl, I won the Cotton Bowl,” he said. Now old 19 has won the Super Bowl.