The Bucs Knew How To Shine

Simply the best, better than all the rest.

Being a Tampa Bay sports fan right now is a gift that keeps on giving. Now the Buccaneers have repeated their 2003 feat, besting the Kansas City Chiefs to win the 55th Super Bowl 31-9. For the first time – Tampa Bay has two champions simultaneously: the Lightning, who won the Stanley Cup in September, and now the Bucs.

The big surprise last night in the Bucs championship was the game wasn’t close most of the way – and none of the football experts saw that coming.

It was a Super Bowl like none of the others – for one, it was a home game in the strictest of senses for one of the teams. Plus, the ongoing COVID pandemic limited attendance to the game to 22,000 fans and 30,000 cardboard cut outs of fans.

If the Buccaneer management keeps the team together, I could easily see the Bucs being contenders a year or two more. The defense grew by leaps and bounds in the waning games of the 2020-21 campaign. If they hit their stride as I think they might, the Bucs might not need much of an offense beyond the GOAT (greatest of all time), Tom Brady – now a holder of SEVEN Super Bowls.

If you had told me 20 years ago that there would be a guy who competed in ten Super Bowls and won seven of them, I would have thought you were crazy. When Brady retires – they shouldn’t wait to put him in the Hall of Fame. Give him the bust and the yellow jacket right away.

It’s so weird to see each of the Tampa Bay sports repeat almost exactly their greatest accomplishments all within a five-year span.

Now, it’s the Lightning’s turn to break the cycle. So far they’ve won all but two of their games – so perhaps they can become the first Tampa Bay team to win two championships in a row.

Buccaneers Seeking More Treasure

As I have been mentioning, there has been happiness in our area amidst all the sadness the COVID pandemic continues to cause.

This was the first stretch of sporting seasons where the Lightning (who won the Stanley Cup), the Rays (who made the World Series), and Buccaneers all made the playoffs of their respective leagues. After the Bucs defeated the Saints 30-20 in the NFC Divisional Playoff last night (essentially the quarterfinal round of the Super Bowl, for those of you who follow less casually), the Bucs stand a win away from playing in the Super Bowl – which would also make this the first stretch of seasons where all three teams made the finals of their respective sports.

Even more interesting is that if the Bucs win, they go down in history as the first team to host their own Super Bowl. The 1979 Rams and 1984 49ers have come the closest to the fear so far – playing their Super Bowls in nearby stadiums. But a team hosting their own Big Game has only ever occurred in fiction. (The Warren Beatty film Heaven Can Wait comes to mind.)

Interesting times for sure in this area, though I wonder if the average sports fan appreciates how fortunate of a time this is.

Bucco Brady

In the midst of all of the terrible news out there with the virus comes perhaps one of the biggest sports stories in local history. Tom Brady, one of the all-time great NFL stars, is about to become a Tampa Bay Buccaneer.

Many of you no doubt wonder how I feel about this – and I’m kind of in the “meh” category about it. It might give Tampa Bay a shot at the playoffs this year – the year that Tampa will host Super Bowl LV – but we’re assuming a lot of things.

The biggest problem: will there be a 2020-2021 NFL season? Everyone is going on the assumption that life returns to normal in a few months. In that time, how many NFL players wind up getting the virus – even if they take the best of precautions? How bad will the economy be once it passes?

Secondly, Brady has never been a mobile quarterback – so unless the Bucs upgrade their offensive line, that’s a huge problem. Aging quarterbacks changing teams in the twilight of their careers rarely works out. It did for a few years when Joe Montana went to Kansas City – but not for Johnny Unitas when he played in San Diego, or when Joe Namath played with the Rams.

The Bucs are making the gamble because it will give the beleaguered franchize a buzz, but it should be noted that there is very little upside to this big move in the long term. Tom Brady might wind up being Tampa Bay’s trojan horse.

The Bucs Knew How To Shine

I was an excited little eight year-old on this date 40 years ago – December 16, 1979. My father and I couldn’t wait to hear the Bucs-Chiefs game on 1250 WDAE radio to see whether or not the local NFL team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, would make the playoffs for the first time in their short history. (The game was not aired on TV locally, as the game didn’t sell out prior to 72 hours before kick off – so it was “blacked out” here in the Tampa Bay area. The local NBC station that had the rights to the Bucs game aired a Pittsburgh Steelers-Buffalo Bills contest instead.)

Through his job at Publix Super Markets, my Dad had gotten Bucs tickets four times that year – so we saw one pre-season and three regular season games, playing the Rams, Saints (in both the pre-season and the regular season) and the New York Giants.

It was two short years earlier that the Bucs ended the worst losing streak in NFL history, winning a game after losing 26 in a row to start their franchise. By this game the Bucs had won 9 in ’79, more than the seven they had won the first three years combined. After winning five a row out of the gate, the Bucs stumbled in their last three games up until this one. If they could beat the lowly Kansas City Chiefs, they’d win the NFC Central division and host a playoff game two weeks later. If not, it would be a long offseason – getting so close, only to be so far away.

The weather seemed like something out of a Hollywood script, raining most of the morning heading up to the 1:00 kickoff. The pelting rain turned Tampa Stadium into a water wonderland of sorts, cascading down the stands and turning the field into the bottom of a plugged-in bathtub. Water flew into the air whenever players contacted the ground, or ther cleats dug in to the turf.

Mother Nature also did a good job keeping both teams off the scoreboard – which wasn’t good news for the Bucs. They needed a win and only a win to make it to their Jerusalem – the playoffs. In the fourth quarter, Neil O’Donoghue from Ireland kicked a short field goal to give the Bucs a 3-0 lead, which held up through the final gun.

The one thing that struck me about the game, seeing highlights of it all these years later – was the joy the team had after they had won and locked up the playoff spot. It was almost as if they collectively said, “Thank God we won.”

That ’79 team wasn’t done. They defeated the Eagles in what many thought was an upset at the time, 24-17 – before losing 9-0 to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship, the game that would have sent Tampa Bay to Super Bowl XIV had they won it. In 1981 and 1982, the Bucs went back to the playoffs, getting kayoed by Dallas each time in their first playoff game each season.

The Bucs wouldn’t see the playoffs again until 1997 – and here in 2019, another renaissance may be at hand.

The Bucs Drive For 55

The great part about the sporting world is that it has moments no one expects. After the Rays reached their summit on Friday night in clinching a playoff spot, only a few expected the Bucs to do big things against the Rams.

In Los Angeles, where the Bucs played their first ever game in 1976 – the Buccaneers made history with a 55-40 win over the previous season’s NFC champs. The odd thing about Tampa’s scoring spree is that it could have easily have been more, despite breaking their all time single game scoring record of 48.

If the Bucs can find some maturity on defense, the future for Tampa Bay’s NFL franchise may get here sooner than anyone expected. Their game this Sunday against New Orleans could be a indicator of how far they already have come.

Rays And Bucs

The Tampa Bay media market has to be one of the more unique sports markets in the world.

We have a baseball team in the Rays that win consistently all season, yet no one goes to their games.

The Buccaneers have the exact reverse problem: people go to see them, but they can’t win.

The latest evidence of this was the 2019 opening game against San Francisco where the visiting team won 31-17. Jameis Winston, whom for some reason the Bucs ownership still thinks is a competent quarterback, threw three touchdown passes. Unfortunately, two of them went to the 49ers via interceptions.

The Rays, on the other hand, look like a playoff team and would make it if the season ended today. It’d be their first trip to the postseason in six years, back when Joe Madden managed a nearly entirely different group.

The best of times and the worst of times.

Bucco Bruce?

As most of you by now, ex-Cardinals coach Bruce Arians was tabbed last week to be the new coach of our local NFL team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

I have to admit I’m very skeptical of this particular hire – for the simple reason that Arians, while gifted at what he does, is 66 years old and has had a few health matters in his coaching career and life. CBS thought enough of him to put him on their second best commentary team covering their NFL games along with Greg Gumbel and Trent Green, but then Arians made the U-turn back to the sidelines with Tampa in this coming 2019-2020 season.

More concerning to me is that the move indicates that the Bucs ownership also wants to keep Jameis Winston around as their long-term quarterback. Based on how Winston has played lately, I’d like to have whatever the Bucs ownership is smoking. As productive as the Bucs were offensively in 2018, Jameis was just a tad better than Ryan Fitzpatrick was – so other parts of the offense were the difference makers and not the signal-caller.

It’s been over a decade since the Bucs made the playoffs – hopefully, that changes with Bruce’s hire, but right now I’m not seeing how it can happen.

Another Rebuild In Bucs Land

Amidst the celebration that is the ending of one year, the start of the next, and the wall-to-wall football that brings – I was a bit sad to hear that the Bucs fired their latest head coach, Dirk Koetter. After commencing hot in winning their first two games, the Tampa Bay NFL team fell back to Earth, losing 11 of their next 14 games for a 5-11 mark in 2018.

The big question hovering in my head is: where do the Bucs go next for a head coach? They’ve tried four head coaches this past decade of seasons – all of whom winded up being fired for poor achievements on the grid. Only Raheem Morris produced a winning season in 2010, and Koetter doing likewise in 2016 – with back-to-back 5-11 marks the cause to give him the ax.

I would have much rather have seen the Bucs get rid of Jameis Winston and find a good reserve QB in the league or a collegiate prospect. Winston looks more and more like an also-ran QB in the NFL as opposed to anyone who will be amongst the elite passers in the game. Ryan Fitzpatrick ran the offense with almost similar success, and many consider “Fitz” a journeyman signal-caller at best. Plus, the off-field shenanigans Winston seems to find – sorry, he’s not worth the trouble to my worldview.

Hopefully, there’s a defensive genius out there who can move into being a head coach with ease. That seems to need what the Bucs could use most at this juncture.

Audio Slice #10: A Brief History Of The Bucs

Music track used was: “All That” from Bensound.com.

EDIT, 12:20 pm ET, 12/17/2018: I erroneously say in this entry that the Bucs-Eagles 1979 playoff game was played on December 30th. I was off one day – it was played Saturday, December 29th.

EDIT, 4:46 pm ET, 12/17/2018: I also goofed giving out the URL to this blog, but hey – you’re here, right? Audio was fixed to reflect the correct address a bit later.

Yet Another New Day In Tampa Bay?

Perhaps it was an aberration of some kind. During the course of the NFL season, such aberrations happen – because it’s a very rare event for an NFL team to go undefeated. But alas, my hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers surprised the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles 27-21 to go 2-0 in this young 2018-2019 NFL season.

If you asked even the most die-hard of Tampa Bay fans before the game yesterday if the Buccaneers had a chance at winning, and if they were honest in their assessments – I’d think very few of them would have picked against the Eagles, even though they were only three-point favorites in the views of the oddsmakers.

The difference so far this 2018 season seems to have been the play of Ryan Fitzpatrick, helming at quarterback while Jameis Winston is off serving a three-game suspension for some questionable conduct in a recent off-season involving an Uber driver in Arizona. With Winston gone, the passing game is flourishing for the journeyman quarterback from Harvard – as has the offense, scoring 75 points in the first two games, adding the record-tying 48 they tallied in New Orleans the week prior.

Will it last? Can it last? Who knows. But not a bad idea to drink this moment in if you’re a Bucs fan. They haven’t been to the playoffs since the 2007-2008 campaign, so maybe this could be the year that wait may finally end.

The Return Of Chucky?

At the start, it looked like it was going to be a good season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as they won two of their first three games. Then, as it often does in recent years, the roof of reality caved in, with the Bucs losing to the Saints 30-10 for their fifth straight loss.

(Foot note: Yes, I actually watched the NFL yesterday. I went six weeks without over the whole kneeling controversy, plus week one here in Tampa Bay got wiped out by Hurricane Irma. I think it’s impossible the league didn’t notice, so it’s time to declare victory and move on with baseball season now over and done with.)

When a team underachieves, the sports punditry begins to speculate. Will this lead to the current head coach, Dirk Koetter, being forced out? If so, who will the Bucs hire next?

Since Jon Gruden was fired after the 2008 season, the Bucs have hired four head coaches. They tried the “capable assistant coach” approach with both Koetter and Raheem Morris. They tried the “proven college head coach” approach with Greg Schiano. They tried the “former Super Bowl coach” approach with Lovie Smith, all of which failed. (Six head coaches have taken two teams to the Super Bowl, but none have won the big game with two different teams.)

With the coaching carousel never ending here in Tampa, some got to wondering if Jon Gruden, the only Bucs head coach to make and win the Super Bowl fifteen seasons ago, would take the job in 2018. Gruden’s been in the booth for ESPN calling Monday Night Football games, with the hot rumor being he’d take the job if offered.

As good as the idea sounds and looks on paper, I think it’s a terrible idea. I’ve always argued that the Bucs winning it all in 2002-2003 was with a team Tony Dungy and Rich McKay had built, not Gruden, as he was just there to close the deal. It was a stroke of luck that they played Oakland in the Super Bowl that season, the team Gruden formerly coached. For whatever reason, the Bucs couldn’t parlay that success into a dynasty, as the Patriots have the last couple of decades.

Finally, it was my observations in the 2000’s that Gruden doesn’t mesh with his quarterbacks sometimes, seeming to micromanage them. Putting him back in as head coach with Jameis Winston as his quarterback could wind up being an absolute disaster. Winston is a capable hand who puts up good stats, but it seems to me he gets lost out there in key moments and winds up making bonehead plays. A taskmaster type coach like Gruden sounds like a good fit, but I think it’s more likely there could be a clash of personalities.

Hopefully, the Bucs get off the Gruden bandwagon, but knowing how the Glazers think, it’s possible the wagon has already left the station.

The Bursting Bucs Bubble

As many of you know by now, Tampa Bay’s winning streak ended last night, with the Dallas Cowboys beating them, 26-20. While moral victories are often ignored, it’s important to point out that the Bucs came within six points of defeating one of the best teams in the NFL right now.

Sometimes the development of an elite NFL team is not about wins or losses, but the experience gained in the process. I think they’ll learn from this and apply what they learned to use in the weeks ahead.

Playoff wise, Tampa Bay does not control its own destiny now. Winning their last two games (in New Orleans this Saturday afternoon, then at home against Carolina on New Year’s Day) gets them to 10-6. The Redskins can go to 10-5-1 (10.5 wins to Tampa’s 10) and make the playoffs should they win out. If the Bucs and Packers each win out tie at 10-6, the Packers currently own that tiebreaker, which likely would be the “strength of victory” criteria, combining the records of the teams the Bucs and Packers each defeated.

However, the Redskins have to play the Giants in two weeks, and the Packers have to beat the Vikings and Lions. So, there’s still hope. Even if the Bucs don’t make the “Super Bowl Tournament” this year, they are a team on the move, which is all local fans can hope for.