Offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter praises Joe and speaks freely

Every football season, Joe gets really sick of “next-man-up” answers from players and coaches, as if no player is that much better than the guy riding the bench behind him.

That’s just pure silly talk — the kind Bucs offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter refuses to engage in.

Joe asked Koetter yesterday what kind of real effect there is on his game-planning now that he knows Vincent Jackson is healthy.

After praising Joe for an excellent question, Koetter let it rip, explaining Jackson makes a massive Xs and Os difference, and his presence with Mike Evans allows the offense to communicate and learn at the proper pace.

“Early in the year we didn’t have Mike that one game. Now we didn’t have Vincent for a couple of games. When you have your two bookend guys out there – one of them is playing X, one of them is playing Z and then we flip them over sometimes – we can call it how we want to call it,” Koetter said.

“They both know both positions. We [don’t] have to worry about moving our guys around. It’s a game plan nightmare when you’re trying to say, ‘On this play we have to get Mike here, we got to get this guy over here.’ It’s way easier on the game plan, it’s way easier on our calls. Our huddle calls are less wordy. Everything has to have another tag, another word in it, to move Mike over here, to move Vince over here. We can run our base concepts and go clear back to when we started OTAs. Like it or not, whether you are a pro or a sixth-grader, repetition and hearing that stuff the same way over and over, I’m a huge believer in that. I worked for [former Missouri head coach] Bob Stull who worked for [former national champion college head coach] Don James, and that goes back to Don James, repetition, let them hear it the same way every time.”

God bless, Koetter. Great insight, and what a breath of fresh air.

Most coaches would have delivered some vanilla baloney like, “Well, Donteea Dye is a good football player, a guy who’s been here all spring and is stepping in and making plays, filling in for Vincent and doing his job.“