He's a continuous ooh-wee. He'll tell you it's his 15 minutes, that he's put himself on blast, that every step is a moment of ecstasy because he can turn his body, his specimen, into any instrument he needs. He's gigging it on Sundays like never before, exploding like C4, and when he looks at where his career is headed, he'll tell you he sees heavens where others merely see skies.

"Are you feeling me?" Simeon Rice asks. "No, are you really feeling me?"

	Simeon Rice has been a menace to opposing QBs this season.

Well, yes, sort of -- we're trying our best. Rice is at the Buccaneers complex, lounging in a black leather chair, using it as his pulpit. As he speaks, his arms spread wide, then collapse back. His eyes harden and soften. Explaining who he is, he spews a gospel that is undeniably his: SimeonSpeak.

"I'm a free spirit," he says. "A spirit that evolves. From having no game to being able to talk to girls. I'm not really searching, but redefining. I know what I am. I'm a diamond. I'm just refining it. Polishing it. Glossing it up."

Heading into Week 14's MNF game, Rice is the league's sacks leader and, at age 28, he's the jewel of the NFL's best defense. But to understand why his play pushes the limits of legal malice, you need to understand him. And to understand him, you need a little bit of help. SimeonSpeak is a collage of thoughts, easy to hear but hard to decipher. "I went to Stanford," says safety John Lynch, "and I don't understand him."

There is one man who understands Rice, who's been able to harness him. He stands nine inches shorter than Rice, weighs 100 pounds less and speaks with a worn, gravely voice: Pops. He is a man who picked up his son from school when the boy took swings at teachers; a man who threatened to drown his son, but only to scare him straight.

Yeah, understanding the flamboyant isn't easy. But Simeon wants you to understand what he's saying. Lucky for you, he's here to help.

And lucky for Simeon, Pops is too.

***

SimeonSpeak: I'm putting myself on blast. It's going all out. It's how I play. I was always, in my mind, the best player in the league. I was just on a crappy Arizona team. So I came to Tampa and used what people said -- that I was all flash and no substance -- as motivation. I wanna be like Keyser Soze. Larger than life. Just put myself on blast and lead the team in sacks.

***

He loves his body, and it's a thing of wonder, really. His arms reach so wide that when you see replays of him sacking Brett Favre, it looks like Shaq hugging Kobe. His hands are huge and soft: When the Bucs play pickup basketball games, he leads the fast break. His 6'5'', 268-pound body is hardened by daily off-season workouts of two water drills (plyometrics and running), martial arts, boxing and walking on his hands. "I don't move like a prototype defensive lineman," he says. "I'm the next level. Simeon 3000. If you had a computer, hit some switches, did some chemical balances at a lab, then this is what would come out."

He used to refer to his player self as Game, as in: "That wasn't me who got two sacks. That was Game." Curiously, he says talking trash is a distraction, so come Sunday he's a mute on the field, unless you count sacks as oration. In that case, the 22.5 he's made in his past 18 games ring loud and clear. "I'm the best here, it's undisputed," he says. "I wanted people to say, 'He's an ooh-wee over there.' Yeah, a continuous ooh-wee."

Rice simply loves being Rice, and when he gets going, the words can run forever, out of his mouth, off this page, phrases without commas, sentences that never meet periods. And his opinions won't be fettered.

On Falcons quarterback Michael Vick: "He's a great athlete, but he's not at the level I am. I hate putting this out there, but it doesn't matter how fast a guy is. I'm not threatened by speed. I ran 10.3 in the 100. I've got as much mobility as he does."

On certain offensive linemen: "It humors me that a 315-pound sloppy fat cat who can't run the length of a football field calls himself an athlete."

On Tampa Bay: "I'll say it: I wanted to be a Giant. New York is my city. I'm from Chicago. But Tampa? Please. It's not me. I like bright lights."

The lights have been on Rice, and early on they exposed holes in his game that would cost him money years later. He led the Cardinals in sacks after being picked No.3 overall out of Illinois in 1996, but fell asleep in film sessions and turned off his teammates and coaches by playing off-season basketball in the USBL instead of working out at the complex. He was tagged as uncoachable, lazy and, most deflating, soft. After Rice failed to crack Arizona's top 10 in tackles his last two years there, Mark Hatley, then Bears VP of player personnel, told him not to bother visiting Chicago as a free agent, saying, "Your game is all flash."

Still, Rice averaged more than nine sacks a season his first three years in the league, though he didn't make his first Pro Bowl until 1999, when his 16.5 sacks couldn't be ignored. Bucs defensive line coach Rod Marinelli was on the NFC team's coaching staff, and when he watched Rice during a pass-rushing drill in Hawaii, the wheels began spinning. Marinelli knew that the game was shifting toward mobile passers, and he saw Rice -- faster with his hands and feet than any defensive end he'd ever coached -- as the perfect defensive counter. After a practice, Lynch asked Marinelli if anyone had caught his eye. Said the coach, "John, Simeon Rice is doing things I've never seen anyone do before."

After the 2000 season, Marinelli saw Rice again, this time as a free agent, and the coach gave him a challenge: "You can be as good as any player we've got, but you're going to have to prove to me you're hungry." With no interest from the Giants or Bears, the teams he wanted to play for, Rice signed a five-year, $34 million contract with Tampa Bay, with no signing bonus. He was out to become what no one thought he could be: coachable. Marinelli prodded Rice by noting how many times he loafed during games in the first half of the 2001 season and tacked the results on a wall for the team to see.

In Arizona, Rice had lined up head-on in front of a tackle and defended two gaps. Now, he would line up outside the tackle and just concentrate on one. The change brought him more freedom but more nights studying the playbook. After a quiet first half of the season, Rice exploded in December, with eight sacks in five games. "What set him apart was his awareness," Marinelli says. "You didn't hear about that in Arizona. He knew how to make a move, how to get out of a move, how to set a move up."

But with the new NFC South alignment this year, Rice's role has changed again. Tampa Bay now had Michael Vick and Aaron Brooks to defend against, twice each. In the off-season, defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin met new coach Jon Gruden at 7 a.m. every day to sketch a blueprint, and what they came back to was this: Rely on Rice. Or, put Rice on blast.

The new scheme gave Rice some room to swing his 86-inch-wide wings. Marinelli's first rule for Rice: Rush hard, but don't let the quarterback step past you. And it's worked. Against the Bucs, cousins Brooks and Vick have combined to complete just 45% of their passes and have suffered 12 sacks, five by Rice. "With Simeon, we have the speed to match these quarterbacks," says linebacker Derrick Brooks. "He forces action. He doesn't sit back. He has to be smart with his pass rush, but he never stops hustling or lets up." Gruden became so fond of Rice after he sacked Favre twice in a November win, he tacked a poster of him on little Jon Jr.'s wall. Says Gruden, "Simeon's taken off."

***

SimeonSpeak: It's in the way you rep it. It's confidence. It's strength. It's telekinesis. I believe I can move things with my mind. I can do anything. A boy of mine used to say when I was a kid, "Sim, if I woke up this morning and you were flying, I wouldn't be surprised." Hey, I'm blessed.

***

Simeon Rice, wide-awake. It's June 1, 2001, and he's scared and speechless, sitting in his dad's hospital room in a Chicago suburb. Just like when he was a boy, living in the Roseland section of the South Side, when his ears were so attuned to hearing bullets fly, he could tell the difference between one that hit the pavement and one that hit a body.

Growing up, Rice was a rebel, a troublemaker. At age 9, Simeon, the second oldest of Henry and Evelyn Rice's six kids, got into fights at George Washington Elementary, even swung at teachers. Finally, the principal had enough. He called Henry at the Ford plant where he'd been working on the assembly line for 30 years, and told him to pick up his son. Driving to the school, Henry thought of ways to scare Simeon straight. When he got home, he had a plan: He filled a bathtub with cold water, and called Simeon upstairs. "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you," Henry said. "But I'm so tired of you. I can't take it. I'm going to drown you, then you'll be dead." Pops grabbed the back of Simeon's head and pushed it to the tub, stopping just short of the water. Simeon screamed. "I'm going to do better! I promise! Please, please!"

Henry let up instantly, and tried to use whatever fear he'd sparked in his son to forge a bond. He started waking up Simeon and his older brother, Diallo, at 8 a.m. on weekends to do handiwork on the house. Saturdays became bonding time. Pops spoke about honesty and leaned on Simeon to tell the truth, no matter how it sounded, thus giving birth to SimeonSpeak. Says the son, "It was those times he became the biggest figure in my life."

As Simeon grew as an athlete -- and Henry eased up on the tough love -- Simeon pushed like hell for Pops to say he was proud of him. After Mt. Carmel won the class 5A state championship in 1991, it finally happened. "Damn, I never knew you were that good!" Henry said. Simeon's thought: This is the happiest moment of my life.

But on that June day last year, Pops, now 67, felt pain in his chest, and needed his son's help. Simeon drove him to Ingalls Hospital in Harvey, Ill., and the news wasn't good: Henry needed triple bypass surgery. The doctors said nothing was guaranteed, so Henry figured, let God take me when He wants, I'm not doing this. His son wouldn't hear it, and let loose some SimeonSpeak that anyone could understand: "Pops, you're strong. You taught me to be strong. I need you. You're gonna make it. I promise you, I'm going to be right here when you wake up."

Pops nodded, and watched Simeon's eyes watching him until he went under. Simeon stayed all night, through the six-hour surgery. When Pops was wheeled back into the room, Simeon watched him sleep, listening to the heart monitor's rhythmic beeps, waiting for an eye to open. And when it did, Simeon smiled. "Simmy brought me home," Henry says, "and he told me how proud he was, and it was the same things I had said to him growing up. He was just playing it back to me."

***

SimeonSpeak: Let's go gig it. It's the finish. Some people look at life and just see the sky. I see the heavens, the stratospheres, the Milky Way. It's a gift. I just look for the juice.

***

Nowadays, Simeon thinks a lot about the finish. Father and son both do. They talk every other day, and more often than not the conversations lean toward Simeon and the weapon he's become. A hearty laugh comes out of Henry when he speaks of his boy. Now he can't contain himself: "Oh, man, am I proud of him. But we haven't seen the best yet. He hasn't reached his peak yet."

"This is my 15 minutes," Rice says. "And I'm going to ride this thing until the wheels fall off." He thinks about carrying his team into San Diego, and his teammates carrying him out a champion. He thinks about sprinting through the tunnel and then, just before turning onto the field, talking to Pops.

"Gimme the pep talk, Pops."

"You're getting ready to do it?"

"I'm getting ready to do it. Doing it for you."

"Then bring me my trophy."

Then the ooh-wee goes out and gigs it, er -- reps it. You know.

This article appears in the December 23 issue of ESPN The Magazine.