It’s time to be honest with ourselves, the season is almost halfway
done, and we’ve seen far beyond bad football to think this is a normal failure of any kind. This is something epic.
Lets take some facts into account…
1)Lovie Smith didn’t forget how to coach.
2)The Tampa Two has put several teams in the playoffs over the last few years, and will continue to do so, if its coached and played right. There is no defense that counts on each player to ONLY do his job, nothing more, which is the opposite of what any hotshot football player has been taught.
3)The Bucs have invested money into free agency, and these players were all at the top of their positions at the beginning of free agency last year. They are the tops at their position.
Now lets also say another truth…Mistakes have been made. This is not blameless, but at the core of this 1-5 mess, there is something that was totally out of the Bucs hands, and it torpedoed the season into what it is.
Jeff Tedford had a heart attack- and while were all thankful he is ok, the fact it happened killed the Bucs season.
As prepared as you can be, there is nothing you can do to replace an offensive coordinator who is in his first season of installing his offense!!
2 years later? Maybe. The veteran players may know enough about it to get by. But as good a job as Marcus Arroyo is doing, its not the same thing.
Arroyo is trying to finish INSTALLING someone elses offense, and that is impossible. Its hard enough to try to call plays for it a few years down the road. But to try to replace the OC going into WEEK 1 is just something that is not possible, and it showed.
Josh McCown was never the same, he was completely off kilter and while the interceptions and bone headed plays are on him, they couldn’t have come at a worse time. McCown was probably never comfortable with the offense to begin with by that time, but he didn’t do too bad with it, until the play calling went ultra conservative.
It was that point the Bucs started to realize this was not going to be a 1, 2, or 4 week absence, but the end of Jeff Tedford. One whole year spent in the basement discussing football gone down the drain, and its no ones fault.
Make no mistake, in football everyone and everything is connected. Offense, defense, special teams are all interconnected. The defense had its own bad luck, losing Gerald McCoy in time for the Atlanta game, losing your Mike Linebacker for three games, but the offense has put the defense under incredible pressure. And its fair to say Bucs coaching has done the same..by deferring each time they win the coin toss, they put the defense out there first.
What can the Bucs do? Well for starters they can decide now whether or not to cut ties with Tedford and find someone else. This will then result in the 5th offensive coordinator in 6 years with Tampa Bay. Ask Oakland how that has worked with their QBs.
If Tedford can come back, that’s fantastic and the best case situation. But the Bucs are finding out what their players are about, and thats good news. In this season with lots of Free Agents on the Bucs, no one pointed fingers during this slide. This team chemistry is fantastic, and when this turns around, and don’t doubt that it will, this team will be stronger for it.
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