"It was a tough time for me last year," said Tampa Bay Buccaneers' defensive end Simeon Rice. "The team wasn't necessarily built around me. It was built around another person. I felt like I lacked respect last year.

"Your eyes can see one thing, but your mind can tell you another. And you can read the papers and buy into the one-dimension, but I played at a high level and did some pretty phenomenal things. I just wasn't used to trading time and I was in the rotation. It wasn't fun. It wasn't fun at all."

	It took a while, but Rice has adjusted to his new surroundings.

The soul of the Bucs' defense is defensive tackle Warren Sapp, linebacker Derrick Brooks and strong safety John Lynch. One of the league's fiercest units, they had been together for six seasons when Rice and his five-year, $27.5 million contract crashed the party. Rice had been a force with the Arizona Cardinals -- he produced 51.5 sacks in five seasons -- and everything revolved around him. In Tampa, he was the fifth wheel, at best.

Defensive coordinators will tell you that having one dominant pass rusher is like having no dominant rushers. Teams will invariably double-team that man, effectively neutralizing him. Two powerful rushers, however, poses a problem. There's only enough manpower to double one of them, so the other will face only one blocker. The synergy of two rushers, the games and stunts they can run at offensive lines leads to mismatches and mistakes -- i.e., sacks.

This was what the Bucs envisioned when they signed Rice as a free agent. With the muscular Sapp wrecking havoc inside, Rice would be the outside speed rusher. The Yin to Sapp's Yang. At 6-feet-6, 268 pounds, he was a genetic freak, an irresistible combination of speed and size. And while Rice started all 16 games and had a team-high 11 sacks, he wasn't comfortable in the system that didn't revolve around him.

So what changed for the 2002 season? The Bucs or Simeon Rice?

"I think both circumstances changed," Rice said. "When you feel like you're great, and you've played at a high level all the time and you play around coaches and guys that know you, you don't necessarily have to show something new. But the thing here is, I had to come here and show what I'm about. This was a whole 'nother different ballgame.

"This was people looking at me - 'OK, we heard the press on you, we heard you play at a high level, you're a great player, let's see it.' And then you play and you're not delivering on what they want on time and it was just tough. But sometimes I think you see that selfless people flourish best through adversity."

The perfect fit
This year? Well, let's just say that Rice has been delivering on time.

Brooks was voted the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year, but you can make a reasonable case for Rice.

Rice led the NFC with 15.5 sacks; only Miami's Jason Taylor (18.5) had more. Rice led the team with 6 forced fumbles -- perhaps the best marker of mayhem. Rice led all Bucs linemen with 11 passes defenses and was in on 75 tackles.

Respect has followed.

"Simeon's just the absolute perfect fit for this scheme," Lynch said. "I'll never forget being at the Pro Bowl in '99 and our staff was over there and our (assistant) coach, Rob Marinelli, told me, 'Simeon Rice is doing things that I've never seen someone do. If he could ever get in our system, he will just take off.

"I think we're seeing that come to fruition."

Lynch acknowledged that Rice had suffered through an awkward transition.

	“	Simeon's just the absolute perfect fit for this scheme. I'll never forget being at the Pro Bowl in '99 and our staff was over there and our (assistant) coach, Rob Marinelli, told me, 'Simeon Rice is doing things that I've never seen someone do.. ”
		— Bucs S John Lynch

"You saw Sim going through some growing pains in this system," Lynch said. "One of the things he pointed out was that this was a tight-knit group. It took him a little while to feel his place in our scheme. Not only in the playing part, but just in being part of the chemistry of us. I think that's happened this year."

Tampa Bay head coach Jon Gruden, who deserves some credit for reaching out to Rice when he arrived in the wake of the deposed Tony Dungy, has been impressed.

"Simeon has been on a spaceship," Gruden said. "He's been in outer space for the last three or four years, and he's just now landed on America or on Earth. He's starting to find his way here in terms of how we want him to play, how he's capable of playing. What you are seeing is what you are going to get for a long time."

Listen to Sapp, the player that Rice was referring to when he said the defense was constructed around a single player: "He's the phenom. I mean, we don't have anything that looks close to him. We used to have short, fat guys on our D-line, then all of a sudden here comes this 6-foot-6, two-percent body fat majestic monster.

"He's just something that you don't see every day. He has really aided my game, 'cause now I have somebody to play off to where, if you're going to double me, he's going to work on that one-on-one. This guy was born to do it, and you can see it in his numbers."

In a five-game span, from Oct. 27 to Dec. 1, Rice was unconscious: There were 2 sacks of Randy Fasani, 7 tackles and a forced fumble at the Carolina Panthers … Against Minnesota, it was 2 more sacks of Daunte Culpepper, 4 tackles and, for the third week in a row, a forced fumble … After a bye week, the Panthers' Rodney Peete went down for two more sacks and there was a fourth consecutive forced fumble and 7 tackles … Against Green Bay, Brett Favre was the fourth consecutive two-sack victim -- both coming in the fourth quarter and the last one on the final play … In New Orleans, Aaron Brooks was sacked three times in the first quarter -- the last one caused a fumble out of the end zone and resulted in a safety. Rice set an NFL record with five consecutive multi-sack games.

Against San Francisco in the divisional playoff game, Rice sacked Jeff Garcia and forced a fumble. In the NFC championship game against Philadelphia, Rice contributed another typical bottom line: 1 sack of Donovan McNabb and a forced fumble.

	Rice

He has become numbingly consistent. Rice now has 78 sacks in 105 career games, leaving him about halfway to a Hall of Fame career. In his seventh season, at 28, he has a chance to approach the all-time numbers of Reggie White (198 sacks), Bruce Smith (195) and Kevin Greene (160).

Rice's success hasn't surprised anyone -- including, of course, himself. But perhaps, for the first time, his teammates think as highly of him as he does himself.

Last week in Tampa, after his defensive teammates had offered copious compliments, Rice was told that they believed he had made their defense something it hadn't been.

Rice's eyes widened. He paused. He seemed genuinely surprised.

"Really?" he said, hesitantly.

"Wow … that's cool. I'm the missing link, huh?"

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.