A Bye Could Screw Things Up
September 7th, 2017
Rallying his troops.
Yeah, Joe gets that Bucs fans didn’t want to lose the bye week as the Bucs-Dolphins game was postponed to Nov. 19 thanks to Hurricane Irma.
(For the few folks who still believed the game could have been played in South Florida, not only did Gov. Scott disagree with you, Wednesday night Miami-Dade County ordered a mandatory evacuation of South Beach.)
Winning Bucs coach Dirk Koetter put a positive face on yesterday — he had to — and suggested if the Bucs are rolling, then a bye might just come at a bad time.
“Guess what? We’ve got to adjust and we’ve got to deal with it,” Koetter said. “No one’s going to feel sorry for us. I’ve talked to a ton of people today, there is a precedence for teams playing 15 or 16 games in a row and you know what? Most of those teams have done pretty well. This isn’t going to affect us one bit until we get to Week 11. If we’re 10-0 or 0-10 we’d be feeling different about ourselves. If we’re 10-0, we’d probably want to keep playing. If we’re 0-10, I probably won’t be standing here.”
It’s an interesting point. For example, the bye last year came at a perfect point. The Bucs were able to turn the season around. If the Bucs were winning when the bye arrived, most fans would have moaned the bye was a distraction.
As Joe has pointed out, the NFL used to have 16-game schedules with no byes. The world did not come to an end and Super Bowl champions were crowned.
September 7th, 2017 at 12:05 am
92 dolphins made out just fine.
September 7th, 2017 at 12:30 am
In 2008, the Baltimore Ravens made the AFC Championship Game on a Week 2 bye, because their scheduled game against the Houston Texans that week had to be pushed back due to Hurricane Katrina.
September 7th, 2017 at 12:35 am
Ya but they still could’ve just moved the location
September 7th, 2017 at 12:51 am
Very true teams would play 16 in a row..but it was ALL teams…that’s my main gripe..
If this would have been NE, NYG, or Dallas..it would have been a neutral location and game would have gone on..
That’s my beef…
September 7th, 2017 at 12:52 am
They should get together as a team and do something creative like the 85 Bears.
We can do…. “Its a Hard Knock Life.”
Its The Hard Knock Life, of a Bucs Fan….. Steady feeling…. The Hard Knock Life…. You and Me…. Steady Breathing, I Hate that feeling…. Of The Hard Knock Life…..
New Bucs song anyone???
Go Bucs!!!
I will collect My Royalties Later :-p
September 7th, 2017 at 12:54 am
I Laugh I Laugh….
September 7th, 2017 at 1:20 am
In all fairness, I understand the response from the NFL. It does challenge me..My.biggest problem with it is our schedule is Division heavy at the end of the season without a bye. That will determine whether we have a postseason or not. IMHO.
September 7th, 2017 at 1:42 am
Who cares about week 11? Its week 2 we should worry about. 5 days off, awkward preperation, we will be rusty when the oponent played a meaningful game with all the implications. Week 11 is not the issue right now.
September 7th, 2017 at 2:52 am
Win the NFC, then you’ll get a bye.
September 7th, 2017 at 5:22 am
What Rod said^^
September 7th, 2017 at 6:19 am
Absolutely love the way Dirk Koetter phrases things … “If we’re 10-0, we’d probably want to keep playing. If we’re 0-10, I probably won’t be standing here.”
September 7th, 2017 at 6:50 am
Luckily , we start out with bears now
September 7th, 2017 at 7:21 am
Moving the location wasn’t as option. Having people leave their families behind in a hurricane? C’mon Greg. I hope you’re not serious.
September 7th, 2017 at 8:01 am
The fact that teams always used to play with no bye weeks is irrelevant. The point is it sucks. Every team in the NFL gets a week off in the middle of the season and it helps them get healthy again and right some wrongs.
The bucks and dolphins don’t get that advantage. There really was no other option though. Sending the players away from Miami and Tampa when this hurricane is bearing down on their family, was not an option.
Playing Thursday night, which I thought they should at first, turned out to be not an option since parts of Miami and the keys are being evacuated. Taking state resources away, EMT and cops, when people are evacuating would have been idiotic.
As football fans we just need to realize even though it sucks, they did the right thing
September 7th, 2017 at 8:48 am
Of coarse its not ideal, but neither is life. You deal with whats thrown your way and move on. This is a minor bump in the road. Imagine if we were in the place of Jimbo Fisher trying to figure out how to salvage your season after week one with no QB to play with. That would really suck. This is as big of a factor as Koetter lets it be. Its only a change in plans. I am sure they can deal with it.
September 7th, 2017 at 10:27 am
Koetter is spinning it for his team. You can’t convince me he is happy about this at all.
September 7th, 2017 at 10:54 am
Every team in the NFL gets a week off in the middle of the season and it helps them get healthy again and right some wrongs.
AGAIN….Every team then has a 3% edge in that one game. Since the advent of the bye in 1990 teams coming off bye weeks win 53% and lose 47%!!!!
I too thought the bye was a HUGE advantage until I did the research. The bottom line is that the good teams win after their bye and the poor teams still lose!
In that research btw I did find one anomaly….Walter Football did an interesting breeakout….bye advantages vary pretty widely by coaches….so Mike Shanahan and Andy Reid have great records out of byes…Mike Holmgren another SB coach does not fare so well.
September 7th, 2017 at 7:57 pm
Pure deee Nonsense!! Its not a bye that has the potential to screww our Bucs. Its the Bucs..themselves! If you are truly a good team, the record at the end will indicate that. Not a Bye. Thats just one of many..plausable pretext to hide behind. Get off your A’s and win some games Bucs..Get us to the playoffs and beyond. Don’t tel lus how rocky the GD ocean is..Bring the ship home!!!!!!!