by RICK STROUD, TIMES STAFF WRITER , St. Petersburg Times

After two upsetting defensive performances to start the season, the Bucs coach spends time selling the players on this year's new scheme.

But Wednesday, Bucs coach Raheem Morris felt compelled to hold his version of a town hall meeting and campaign hard for players to stay the course under defensive coordinator Jim Bates.

Talk of a mutiny would be understandable. The Bucs' 31st-ranked defense yielded 900 yards and 67 points combined in losses to Dallas and Buffalo, including five touchdown passes of 30 yards or more.

"It's exactly what I put up on the board (Wednesday) to show our team (Bates') philosophy and what he believes in," Morris said. "And I matched it up with our philosophy and what I believe in. And it's pretty similar. So a lot of things that we already believe in is what we're going to do."

Bates, 63, was expected to replace the Tampa 2 system with a scheme that favored bump-and-run over the zone style that was dominant for more than a decade under Monte Kiffin, who left after last season.

But playing with six new full-time starters, Bates' defense has been equally ineffective against the run and the pass. The Bucs missed 24 tackles against Buffalo, and they are allowing a league-worst 7.5 yards per play.

Last week, at the behest of Morris, a former defensive coach, the Bucs went back to playing a lot of two-deep safeties and trying to stop the run using their front seven.

But Bills running back Freddie Jackson had 163 yards on 28 carries. And when Tampa Bay brought an eighth defender into the box to stop the run, the Bills connected on long touchdown passes to Lee Evans and Terrell Owens.

Bates, who was successful in implementing similar plans in Miami and Green Bay, has never been through anything like this.

"It's awfully hard during preseason to tell where a team is at,'' Bates said. ''You've got to get into the season, and we have to make adjustments. It isn't like we have Deion Sanders out there that I was part of for years or that we have (former Dolphins cornerbacks) Sam Madison and Pat Surtain. I mean, we have to adjust a little bit to what I'm accustomed to doing in a lot of situations. I have to be able to adjust. ... We put the plan together. It isn't a Jim Bates game plan. It's all bringing it in together and working as a defensive staff."

Morris said he has been on the headset with Bates during critical points, and it's clear the defense is a hybrid of old and new schemes.

"We can always mix and match our coverage," Morris said. "Like I (said) when I hired Jim, he was always pounding me down trying to figure out about the Tampa 2, and I was always trying to hound him down trying to figure out about quarters (coverage). Now we're just trying to find a happy medium where our players can get comfortable and go out there and play as fast as they possibly can."

Tackle Chris Hovan, who put on 20 pounds hoping to be more successful in Bates' scheme, said the responsibility to turn things around is the players'. "Has it gone our way the past two weeks? All right, get over it. There's 14 more games," he said. "I do not want to see you looking over your shoulder right now. Get your eyes on the ... road and let's go."

Wednesday, Morris reminded his team that the Bucs' next opponent, the 2-0 Giants, played poorly on defense the first two games of 2007 and ended up Super Bowl champions.

Morris hopes the evolution of the defense will at least be similar to 1996, when Tony Dungy implemented the Tampa 2 scheme and started 1-8 before winning five of the last seven.

"The identity was built from '96 on. And that identity in '96, if you go back and look at that tape, it didn't look as well as it did when the final product was there," Morris said. "We're just trying to get to the final product a lot faster. That's today's NFL - the Not For Long league, so you'd better do it a little bit faster when you have an opportunity to do it."

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