Raheem Morris is one of the most likeable guys on this entire planet. Unless your a complete hater, you have to feel for Morris, and admire his desire to fall on the sword for his players. You have to admire it, because his players sure are not willing to do the same, at least thats not the way it looked Sunday.
Like it or not, Raheem Morris is square up against his first crisis he has had to deal with as Head Coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. People were hard on Morris in 2009 and unfairly because they didnt realize you have to give a head coach more than one year to show his stuff. In this case, it may take 5. 2009 was a team of young players that the team was using to turn around an old aging franchise. He was going to get a pass no wonder what happened that year. And in the 2010 season, everything that could go right did so, except the Bucs missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker.
But this year? Right now? Raheem Morris is in a corner, and telling everyone that it’s his fault painted that corner even bigger than it was before. Morris has a full on Crisis on his hands at One Buc Place, and he’s going to have a tough way out of it because the truth is its NOT all his fault. 2010 fooled us into thinking we had a lot of budding talent on the roster. A 10-6 season made Quincy Black and Geno Hayes look like starting linebackers when they are clearly not. It made Kellen Winslow look like a healthy starting Tight End, when he is not healthy enough to practice fully. If you dont practice properly, you dont play properly. Winslow doesnt block the way a starting tight end needs to.
10-6 made the Bucs secondary look good too. “Next Man Up” should have been our first clue. You cant expect backups to be as good as starters all the time, that goes against the laws of NFL Physics. Tanard Jackson missed a whole year, and it’s starting to show. He not only tried to tackle air yesterday, he didnt even take that on. Sean Jones is thrown in our face when a lack of free agents is brought up, but he is part of the problem, not the solution. Jones was simply soft on Sunday- on Arian Foster’s long TD reception, Jones and Jackson had Foster hemmed in to the sideline. A simple childhood sandlot juke move was all it took to leave Jones privates protection gear sitting on the sidebar.
The truth is there is never one reason for something to happen. The Green Bay Packers did not have one single OTA just like the Bucs, so it’s time to let off the excuses. I dont want to hear about Free Agency, the Philadelphia Eagles got ALL the Free Agents and they are in a worse situation than the Bucs. Raheem Morris is right, he does need to do a better job of coaching. But everyone needs to take a good long look in the mirror before this team turns into a 4-12 nightmare that the coaching staff may not wake up from.
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