Bucs Secondary No. 15
July 19th, 2010
It seems Yahoo! Sports’ Jason Cole continues to rank the best units in the NFL by team. He recently typed his list of the best defensive back crews in the NFL and has the Bucs slightly above average.
No. 15. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: The Bucs possess the most volatile secondary in the league, a group defined by mercurial CB Aqib Talib. When Talib is right, he’s a ball-hawking machine. When he’s not, he disrupts the team in every way possible. This group could be great or it could be a train wreck, which is one of the reasons CB Ronde Barber is coming back for his 14th season. Barber is supposed to help keep the likes of Talib, Tanard Jackson and Elbert Mack going in the right direction. Talk about a tough job.
Joe believes this to be utter nonsense. While Talib was hardly a choirboy last year, his distractions hardly affected the Bucs secondary. Rather, it was largely the heinous Jim Bates Experiment.
Joe believes, potentially, the Bucs have one of the better secondaries in the league and it was easily a Bucs strength last year. It just shows how one massive crater in the secondary — Sabby the Goat — dragged the Bucs defensive backs down to middle of the pack in the NFL.
July 19th, 2010 at 8:28 am
Agreed Joe. Take the goat out of the equation and we automatically rank higher. If Myron Lewis is any good, I hope he replaces Mack. Elbert is just too small for the NFL. Ronde, Talib, and Lewis at CB; T-jack and sean jones at safety – thats looks pretty good to me, dare I say even top 10?
July 19th, 2010 at 8:50 am
They have the ability to be a top five secondary, if they get some pass rush and arent expending their energies chasing down running backs who have broken free. Plus, when the opposition gets their running game going, play action is tough to stop.
I am not quite ready to throw the last bit of dirt on the Goat. Lets see how he plays if we get better DL play. (and we better get improvement in the DL play!)
If he still sucks then of course he needs a new pasture.
July 19th, 2010 at 9:00 am
Wow, I agree with Eric as well! Whats going on, LOL. I wanted to say something better than top-10 also, but didn’t want to get my hopes up too high.
I also hope the goat comes back in a big way so we can stop calling him that. He definetely has the physical skills to be good. It seemed to me that his problems could be fixed. He either made mental mistakes or lost fundamentals. The whole world knows all eyes are on him, so we will see what he is made of. If he beats out Jones for the starting spot in camp, he will start off the right way since that will be a legit competition.
July 19th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Man this guy is an idiot, he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about at all.
But yeah, they’re Top 10 if Sean Jones is decent and Lewis fills the nickel role.
July 19th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Sabby should have his second chance being allowed to contribute on the bench. Maybe then he can learn to read and react better because he sadly wasn’t learning how to do it on the field.
July 19th, 2010 at 9:59 am
You’re absolutely right Joe, this guy is grasping at straws…
July 19th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
If Barber is still as good as he was last year, I think replacing Sabby with Jones immediatly makes our secondary top 15. If Biggrs or Lewis can step up this year and offer an upgrade over Mack as well…I think we could have a top 10 secondary. But…
If Barber shows his age has caught up to him, and Mack is still our best nickel CB…our secondary could struggle again.