_Q: When you think about that transition from the 1-15 team to the 2002 team with a new coaching staff and a lot of new players, what was that like in terms of the growth of what became a really good team?_
**Rucker:** "When you talk about that year, we had new coaches, but again, it kind of started up top saying, 'hey, I want smart and tough,' and we're going to pick the guys because the film's not going to lie. So they picked some guys that were going to battle, which this team has those guys on there, and you just need more guys to make those plays, and not the silly stuff, right? So when we had Jack Del Rio as our defensive coordinator, he played the game, so you weren't, you weren't going to pull the wool over his eyes, right? So there was accountability, and I think that's something that I remember is that we laughed, we joked, we had fun, but we also held everybody accountable.
"And I think that was a catalyst, another positive building block from the basement of 1-15 to building this foundation. And then the next year, being in the dance because people believed, and they were drinking the Kool-Aid. And again, there was accountability from us as players, right? The accountability shouldn't start up top with your head coach; it should start with you as an individual to yourself, and an accountability to your teammate next to you. And then it should come from the coach and so forth.
"There are a lot of teams in the history of the NFL that the coaches barely did anything. The players policed it. And so when the players are policing it, you can call a spade a spade. Then the coach is just putting his little touches here and there, but it's got to start within.
"At the end of the day, if I go back to '02 and '03. It wasn't sexy. It wasn't flashy, but we ran the heck out of the ball, and you've got two really good dudes back there that can run the ball. So you just get simple, right? Like if we're not winning, we're going to smash-mouth. We're going to stop the run. We're going to run the ball, and we start there. I don't care if the ball is thrown in the air. I don't care if they throw the ball. We're going to stop the run, and we're going to run the ball. And I think that's a little bit of the '02, '03 time frame to try to help us establish, hey, it's physical. We're going back to old school."