Monte Kiffin may be 62 years old, but he can dance like a man all of 61.

He proves it every Saturday morning, when his Tampa Bay defenders gather for morning meetings, and he asks one group -- linemen, linebackers or defensive backs -- to bring a CD to get things going. Vets like Derrick Brooks have seen this schtick for years, so usually the younger guys carry in the tunes. Eminem. Jay-Z. Snoop. Et al.

	Sapp and the Bucs like to dance on Saturdays, and Sundays.

But no matter what song it is, Kiffin rises before his defenders and dances. He scoots, wiggles, shakes, bee-bops, does whatever he needs to remind everyone that the brain behind the best defense in the NFL is "down."

"They keep me young," he says.

Kiffin has a rule for Saturday mornings -- keep 'em fun. It's one of many rules he has for his defense. For his 4-3, Tampa 2 defense to work it needs rules to follow. Lots of them. The Bucs follow so many rules, you'd half-expect their playbooks to be authored by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider.

"That's how we run our defense," says linebacker Shelton Quarles, who arrives at the Bucs complex around 6:30 every morning to watch film with the coaches. "We use rules. We have to live by them."

It's stylish to say that Tampa's defensive scheme is simple. That's what Bucs players will tell you at first, until they give you a peek of their playbook, and the page opens to one of four or five pages of rules for that week's opponent. These rules sound simple, but they are the Bucs ethic: There is no offense that can break these rules.

"We're so particular about assignments and alignments," says Kiffin. "The details. It actually is a lot."

For show, this is a typical pre-snap thought process for Quarles:

"Say we're running a man defense and the offense comes out and shifts to an empty formation, no backs. You have to know who's covering the backs that have split out, who's got the middle of the field, and what our technique is. Are we outside forcing them inside, or are we inside forcing them outside?

"I have to know whether it's a three-step drop or not, because if it is, we'll jump certain routes. It gets really interesting with our zone blitzes. I might make a close call to where a blitz is coming, and if they motion a receiver across, the blitz totally changes. If they shift to an empty backfield, with three wide receivers, my close call changes from the three-wide receiver side to the tight end and wide receiver side. Then Derrick Brooks will go out and tell the defensive end who to cover. But if he's on a wide receiver, it changes again.

"It's so many things that go on within a play that somebody looking on us from the outside wouldn't even notice. They would just see us playing 1 Gap, 2 Deep and assume it's simple. Before the snap, I'm going through the pages and pages of rules that we have like it's the back of my hand."

The rules work: Since 1999, no team has given up fewer points or passing yards, and only one team has more takaways. "As a group, we're great," says corner Ronde Barber. "As individuals, I'm not so sure."

A lot of teams miss the subtle mechanics of the Bucs scheme and attempt to copy it. The Rams had success last year, and Tony Dungy has had improved the Colts D using it in Indy. But no team has outdone the original. "It's not easy," says safety John Lynch. "And the proof is that it takes so long to learn it and learn it well."

Says corner Brian Kelly: "A lot of people say, 'Let's go play the Tampa 2. Let's roll up the corners and get a safety to sit back.' But they can't do it." He added: "Right now it rules."

Pun intended.

Seth Wickersham covers the NFL for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at seth.wickersham@espnpub.com