Fixing The Bucs
September 25th, 2013
As Joe wrote yesterday, he has never seen Bucs fans so irate, not even in the darkest days of the Raheem Morris regime.
Naturally, Bucs fans being Bucs fans, they must have someone to hate. First it was Michael Clayton, then Gaines Adams, then Byron Leftwich, then Barrett Ruud, then Quincy Black, before loathing Myron Lewis and now Josh Freeman.
In the span of roughly the past three days, Bucs commander Greg Schiano has landed on many fans’ hate lists. And the hate is coming at Schiano from other angles, as well, first some of his players (before the season) and now prominent radio hosts.
Joe’s not sure why said fans flipped on Schiano so quickly. Before the season, the fans openly embraced the New Schiano Order. As popular sports radio and television personality Adam Schein said Monday, who expected the Bucs to compete with Bill Belicheat coming off 10 days to prepare?
Fans are acting like Schiano personally Pearl Harbored the game against the Patriots.
NFL insider Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports wrote a piece on how each of the winless teams, the Bucs among them, can mend their losing ways.
Naturally, La Canfora has his take on how to help the Bucs.
Coach Greg Schiano has a firm hand over the defense, so I don’t imagine many changes there. And quarterback Josh Freeman has already been through a steady procession of offensive coordinators. Schiano said after Sunday’s tepid 23-3 loss to New England that he hasn’t contemplated a quarterback change, but he has also never really endorsed or embraced Freeman, and he did just draft Mike Glennon. And this offense is certainly stuck in a rut.
The run game has been surprisingly average after Doug Martin carved up defenses a year ago. The return of guard Carl Nicks would figure to improve some holes over time, but right now that run game is lacking the explosion that defined it in 2012. Martin has 73 rushes for 297 yards, 4.1 yards per carry, typically the league average. Not sure a QB change would get that revved up, but I also don’t see Schiano riding out a long losing streak without trying something.
Joe doesn’t know where people get the notion that Schiano is going to bench Freeman. He had ample opportunities to do so last week and he claimed after the game such a move never crossed his mind.
Look, Schiano knows the ice beneath his feet is melting by the minute as the Bucs continue to lose week in and week out and it will only re-freeze if the Bucs go on a winning streak streak. Who would you go down with, a quarterback (albeit, struggling terribly) who less than a year ago put up over 4,000 yards and in the past has had a 10-win season, or a greenhorn rookie third-round pick who has never faced an NFL blitz package in the regular season?
For Joe, the choice would be obvious: Freeman.
How did banking on a third-round draft pick of a quarterback work out for Andy Reid last year? Schiano is in survival mode right now. One doesn’t often survive watching a guy learn on the job while losses mount.
September 25th, 2013 at 7:19 am
Survival mode I.e. playing mot to lose will usually lose!
Start glennon
No risk no reward!
September 25th, 2013 at 7:21 am
“Joe doesn’t know where people get the notion that Schiano is going to bench Freeman. He had ample opportunities to do so last week and he claimed after the game such a move never crossed his mind.”
Exactly.
Can we all speak about the facts, you know, what the organization is communicating to the fans?
Stay away from the gossip.
Just print their quotes.
Joe, like you did with preseason practice, I wish you would just list a bullet list of coach and player quotes from time to time.
Just quotes.
September 25th, 2013 at 7:28 am
When Bucs’ flagship station WDAE allows (there’s no evidence of the illegal activity you suggest. That’s a very serious charge that surely wouldn’t be tolerated by the Bucs if true. –Joe), you wonder why the fans have turned on the Bucs’ coach?
Fickle fans – they’ll be all over a player’s jock one second, then his harshest critic the next.
September 25th, 2013 at 7:29 am
Joe, I imagine the hallways at OBP will become more uncomfortable for you since your media partner Duemeg has proclaimed, “I will do everything in my power to run Schiano out of town”.
Really? Yet minutes later during the Freeman that show he hosts, he seemed to keep pushing excuses for Josh’s poor performance back on the coaching staff. Is this sports talk or politics?
September 25th, 2013 at 7:43 am
“The run game is surprisingly average”….but we are second in the league in rushing yards.
September 25th, 2013 at 7:44 am
If we go in to the bye 0-4 then it’s time to start the kid. If starting Freeman gives you your best chance to win and you’re not winning then it’s a moot point. At least with the new guy you’re getting OJT in and working toward next year which, at 0-4, is the only reasonable approach to take.
September 25th, 2013 at 7:47 am
@YourMom – Would’ve been a significant observation were it not a passing league. Nobody else is trying to run. If we’re going to run in a passing league then it needs to be effective and it hasn’t been so far.
September 25th, 2013 at 7:52 am
You mean the rookie third round pick of the Eagles last year that outplayed our sorry excuse for a QB?
September 25th, 2013 at 7:57 am
Joe, the reason why fans are so mad at Schiano is because we know that we have a playoff caliber football team. We had expectations that this would finally be the year that we get back into the playoffs, but instead we lost to a much less talented Jets team starting a rookie QB, and then were out coached in the next two games. We are wasting so much talent with inept coaching on both sides of the ball.
September 25th, 2013 at 8:14 am
Jason La Canfora has not idea about football tactics.
Doug Martin will put up numbers when the bucs will win games, because when they lead they will run more.
Also he tweeted earlier that Freeman will ask for a trade….
29 October is coming quickly, Jason…where is the trade?
September 25th, 2013 at 8:17 am
Joe, are you really saying you think Schiano will start Freeman all season long even if he continues churning out games with a sub-50 QB rating? Because I think that’s crazy.
I think Glennon could start as early as our 5th game, certainly no later than our 9th if we’re still winless.
Of course I’m hoping Josh turns it around, and we at least get to spend some time in the playoff hunt.
September 25th, 2013 at 8:19 am
If the bucs had only orlovsky, no one would suggest to bench freeman because we know that he’ll never be a better shot than Freeman.
No one in here is a Glennon fan but fans like me wants him to take over for 2 reasons
1) can this kids save the season?
2) can this kid be considered as our future franchise qb?
If both answers are no. Then we know what should be our priority for our next draft and we also know that Schiano wasted a valuable 3rd round pick on a backup QB. If the answer is yes to one or both then at least we improve fan base morale because we actually move the ball and score points.
It makes me laugh each time Joe bring the MG mob thing. No one is a mike Glennon fan
September 25th, 2013 at 8:24 am
The run game is 2 NFL in rushing, true. But last year, Martin was ripping off long runs- forcing the defense to move more men in the box. This opened up the passing game, and gave Josh the opurtunity to break all the team passing records, and lead the offense to 9th place in the league( I think that’s an all time high for a Tampa offense)
This year- teams can bring men into the box from the start- because our idiot GC and Head coach got rid of our TE and Slot Reciever, and replaced them with no one!!!!
Clarke and Underwood were both very involved in the offense last year. Now- we have no TE for short( hot) routes, and no Slot Reciever to attack the middle of the field! For targets- he has only Williams and Jackson, and Williams has been hurt all year. They have tried, out if desperation, to put Jackson at the slot. He has rarely lined up there in his career. Most of his drops have been when he was forced into the slot.
Martin has had butter fingers all season
Two targets, one hurt- instead of the 5( or 6) every other QB in the NFL has. Yeah, Josh is having a hard time- throwing to two guys that are double teamed every play- or 3 or 4 Rutgers guys- that don’t belong in the NFL
It’s obvious who the problem is here. It’s Dominick and Schiano. You could start Peyton . . .well meybe not him
You could start Tom Brady- and he couldn’t run the offense under those kind of constraints!!
But I’m sure starting A talentless Beaker Glennon will cure everything. Wait till he sees his first blitz- and realizes he doesn’t have a TE or Running back to dump it off to!! He’ll be eating so much grass- they’ll have to re-sod the stadium!
Only an idiot front office would but us in ths position, after a record breaking offensive year last year. We were supposed to fix the defense- and start winning!
I’m sick of them screwing up this team. Yeah. the hate is running high!
Fire that damn rookie GM and coach both, and get somebody in here that knows how to win in the NFL!!!
September 25th, 2013 at 8:25 am
Martin is 3 yards shy of 100 yards per game, which puts him on pace for a 1,600 yards rushing for the season. And that’s not total yards. It’s also not average. It is above average.
I know there are some whose thinking is that “since the season is over we may as well see what we have in Glennon.”
It just does not work that way. First, the season isn’t over. Anything can happen. There are examples throughout the history of the NFL of cases where a team starts rough and wins big.
I realize the excuse of naysayers is that those teams have a history of winning. They can claim that but it isn’t always the case. Even so, it means nothing.
When Lynch, Brooms and Sapp decided they would turn the team around there was no winning record either. Twenty-two losing seasons straight. Yet they did it.
Some may claim we don’t have those players any longer. No, but we do have the next generation of superstars in David, Barron, & GMC. Ironically, still a LB, Safety and DT.
But we also have more than that. We have Revis. We have Clayborn. We have Spence, who is having a top-notch year for a rookie.
The truth is we thought, coming into the season, that for the offense Jackson, Williams and Martin would push us over the edge. But we had two key injuries on the oline and that led to issues. We had poor depth, even though the Bucs brought in a ton of WRs in camp.
This season is nowhere near over.
September 25th, 2013 at 8:26 am
“Brooms” clearly is Brooks. Tablet autocorrect…gotta love it.
September 25th, 2013 at 8:27 am
Joe has no breath is his thinking. He is in some ways fact locked. He cannot see beyond the formula.
However I have heard he has a wonderful singing voice.
Let Freeman start…he will lose most of his starts. Let Glennon start…he will likely lose most of his starts. The end result is the same. Another wasted year. Anotger wasted draft pick.
September 25th, 2013 at 8:28 am
Deumig calling Schiano a maniac (listen to his podcast) to his audience. Deumig has admitted several times that his agenda is to run Schiano out of town. Now JBF asks why Buc fans are upset at having Coach Schiano as the Bucs’ coach. With friends like Deumig, who needs enemies?
September 25th, 2013 at 8:30 am
@BucsQcCity – Bingo. nobody who is calling for Glennon actually thinks this kid is the second coming of anything. We just know that what we have is bad so we’ve got to give something else we have available a chance. Sticking with what isn’t working cannot be our only play. Give the kid a chance to outplay our expectations. Freeman is who we thought he was. We went into this season thinking Freeman he was going to struggle and, unfortunately, he proved us right. While I don’t think Glennon is going to blow up into a Russel Wilson, we cannot possibly lose more games than we already are so give him a chance. Freeman had 3+ seasons to show what he’s got. Thanks for playing and good luck wherever you end up. Let’s give Glennon a chance to actually show us something in game so we don’t go into next season banking on him and make another Bowers mistake
September 25th, 2013 at 8:31 am
The run game is 2 NFL in rushing, true. But last year, Martin was ripping off long runs- forcing the defense to move more men in the box. This opened up the passing game, and gave Josh the opurtunity to break all the team passing records, and lead the offense to 9th place in the league( I think that’s an all time high for a Tampa offense)
This year- teams can bring men into the box from the start- because our idiot GC and Head coach got rid of our TE and Slot Reciever, and replaced them with no one!!!!
Clarke and Underwood were both very involved in the offense last year. Now- we have no TE for short( hot) routes, and no Slot Reciever to attack the middle of the field! For targets- he has only Williams and Jackson, and Williams has been hurt all year. They have tried, out if desperation, to put Jackson at the slot. He has rarely lined up there in his career. Most of his drops have been when he was forced into the slot.
Martin has had butter fingers all season
Two targets, one hurt- instead of the 5( or 6) every other QB in the NFL has. Yeah, Josh is having a hard time- throwing to two guys that are double teamed every play- or 3 or 4 Rutgers guys- that don’t belong in the NFL
It’s obvious who the problem is here. It’s Dominick and Schiano. You could start Peyton . . .well meybe not him
You could start Tom Brady- and he couldn’t run the offense under those kind of constraints!!
But I’m sure starting A talentless Beaker Glennon will cure everything. Wait till he sees his first blitz- and realizes he doesn’t have a TE or Running back to dump it off to!! He’ll be eating so much grass- they’ll have to re-sod the stadium!
Only an idiot front office would but us in ths position, after a record breaking offensive year last year. We were supposed to fix the defense- and start winning!
I’m sick of them screwing up this team. Yeah. the hate is running high!
Fire that damn rookie GM and coach both, and get somebody in here that knows how to win in the NFL!!!
This team has talented players. It has Probowlers. Yet our GM didn’t think to replace half of Our Recievers, that he foolishly let walk??
Clarke isn’t better than Tim Wright( whoever the hell he is)???
Underwood wasn’t ten times more productive than “can’t catch” Oglesby?
And Michael Bennett is the DL star at Seattle!
Yeah. Enough to make anyone angry!!!
September 25th, 2013 at 8:35 am
And another post disappears!!
Help Joe! I can’t be that Clever two times in a row
September 25th, 2013 at 8:49 am
And how’s that third round pick in Seattle working out?
September 25th, 2013 at 8:51 am
I just got messages from Bleacher Report and Joe’s favorite, ESPN, that say the Bucs have benched Freeman…..
September 25th, 2013 at 8:52 am
If the reports are true, it looks like Freeman has been benched. Not sure what changed Schiano’s mind. I certainly don’t think Freeman has been playing well, but is Glennon the better option. I guess we will soon find out.
September 25th, 2013 at 8:53 am
ESPN just reported that Freeman is benched and the Glennon gets the next start.
September 25th, 2013 at 8:55 am
The Freeman era ended minutes ago. Here we go…
September 25th, 2013 at 8:56 am
IT’S A NEW DAY IN TAMPA BAY!
September 25th, 2013 at 9:24 am
AWESOME!!!!!!!
September 25th, 2013 at 9:33 am
Thanks Joe.
September 25th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
Joe, I love you and all but you’ve had your head in a hole with this Freeman issue.