Sure, next Sunday's game means more in terms of protecting one's home turf and pursuing the 2002 playoffs, but there will be another opportunity on the table against Cleveland, and they don't come by very often.

Six years ago, the list of teams the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had never beaten was distressingly long. Then Oakland fell 10 games into that season and San Diego the next weekend. New England's first loss to the Buccaneers came in 1997, and Pittsburgh's the next year. It was Seattle's turn in 1999, and Dallas in 2000, then the Bucs won their first-ever game with Baltimore last year.

Suddenly only Cleveland remained, and they hadn't played the Bucs since 1995, the two teams' only meeting in the '90s. Clearly, the Buccaneers are a different team now than the one that lost five times to the Browns beginning in 1976, but then again, Cleveland has them beat in that category, as well. Cleveland is, literally, a new team. The old Cleveland Browns scampered off to Baltimore in 1996 but were termed a new franchise, and the Browns were resurrected in Cleveland in 1999, as an expansion team with a built-in past.

The Browns struggled through 2-14 and 3-13 seasons in their first two years back, certainly nothing worse than would be expected of an expansion squad. But last year they improved to 7-9 and this season they are off to a 2-3 start and are in second place in the AFC North. The resumption of the Bucs-Browns series comes at a time when the Cleveland franchise has apparently got its feet back underneath it and will once again be a formidable opponent.

So the Bucs must put forth a strong effort in order to remove that one final zero from the win column of their team-versus-team results chart. Behind franchise QB Tim Couch, the Browns offense ranks 10th in the league, even without a consistent running game in the first month. Though he missed the first two games of the season, Couch has thrown for 686 yards, four touchdowns and five picks in the last three, completing 64.8% of his passes.

And though the Browns' defense, expected to be one of the league's tighter squads, was ranked 25th after five games, it still features such noted playmakers as DE Courtney Brown, DT Gerard Warren, LBs Earl Holmes and Dwayne Rudd and S Robert Griffith. Cleveland did have six interceptions through the first five games, picking up from last season when they led the league with 33 picks.

And the Bucs will also be battling their own shaky past in the month of October. It is the worst month of the year in franchise history, in terms of winning percentage, and annual stumbles in the second quarter of the season have forced the Bucs to make repeated strong stretch drives in their recent playoff seasons. A strong October, on the other hand, could keep the Bucs in the running not only for a postseason spot but for one of the two coveted first-round byes.

With the league's new scheduling format, the Bucs are guaranteed a game with each team in the league within any four-year period, but it might be that long until they face the AFC-bound Browns again. If that zero isn't erased this Sunday, it might fester in the Bucs' books for nearly half a decade. That's something the Buccaneers would rather not contemplate.