The Only “Complete Game”
June 17th, 2021
Preacher Arians
Joe always enjoys the insight of an assistant coach talking about his head coach and perceptions of team performance.
Enter Joe Gilbert, the Bucs’ offensive line coach whose primary focus is on the tackles.
Gilbert was reflecting on the Tampa Bay Super Bowl season with his hometown, upstate New York Star Gazettenewspaper and noted he believes the Bucs played one game where they reached their weekly goal and just missed three other times.
What stands out about the team’s performance in the Super Bowl?
Bruce Arians, our head coach, BA always talks about a complete game: offense, defense, special teams. I think you strive for that and I think there’s times during the course of the season where we did that, but I wouldn’t say for four quarters. I would say that performance in the Super Bowl was probably one of the closest that we had where we played all three phases of football together and had a great outcome.
Joe likes the perspective, and after watching the Super Bowl a few times, it’s clear the Bucs indeed played a complete game.
Yeah, looking for four quarters of complete and complementary football is nitpicking and a high bar. But there really is no reason the Bucs can’t be a lot better in phases this season, unless the many personnel changes on special team backfire.
Joe wonders what the three games are that Gilbert believes the Bucs barely fell short of playing complete games.
June 17th, 2021 at 7:28 pm
Great time to be a Bucs’ fan.
June 17th, 2021 at 9:02 pm
Deep as f#ck at coaching, also.
June 17th, 2021 at 9:32 pm
Detroit, Green Bay part 1, chiefs part 2
June 17th, 2021 at 9:56 pm
Special teams will be improved. The punt return with Darden will be light years ahead of last year. Go Lightning! 2-1 after the 2nd period.
June 17th, 2021 at 9:59 pm
Joe says….”Yeah, looking for four quarters of complete and complementary football is nitpicking and a high bar. But there really is no reason the Bucs can’t be a lot better in phases this season, unless the many personnel changes on special team backfire.”
Hey Joe…You can not really say it is Nitpicking when they are grown men getting paid millions of dollars to play a game, that are constantly coached to play complete games, play by play. With these pro athletes it generally is not about physical talent, it is a desire to play and putting in the daily hard work. It is not Nitpicking to expect a team to play a complete game, week in and week out. I DID NOT SAY A PERFECT GAME. If each player simply does his job on the play, not doing anymore than that, then complete games should be normal. So really it is about the HEART- Desire and Willingness to learn + Effort = complete games. It is not Nitpicking, it is expected to simply play from your heart. I know that there are many many variables involved in life, but when you are paid millions of dollars to play a game as a grown man in the NFL, having a willingness to learn and play hard is not Nitpicking, it is why a team pays the player to play.
And as we can see, Brady thinks it is normal to play with HEART, play in and play out. It is not Nitpicking to play with excellence. What some call nitpicking others call greatness, or excellence. That does not mean PERFECTION, that simply playing from your heart each play, with no stupid attitudes, not making excuses for being unwilling to learn and get better. A perfect heart does not mean there are not mistakes, it means you are willing to learn and get better every play, that if you make a mistake, you will simply keep on keep learning and applying what you learn, that is not Nitpicking, that is excellence.
Again Brady, who is NOT perfect, and a FORMER 6th round draft pick, is a great example of of simply being the right way day in and day out as a professional athlete.
GO BUCS!!!!!!
June 17th, 2021 at 9:59 pm
Joe says….”Yeah, looking for four quarters of complete and complementary football is nitpicking and a high bar. But there really is no reason the Bucs can’t be a lot better in phases this season, unless the many personnel changes on special team backfire.”
Hey Joe…You can not really say it is Nitpicking when they are grown men getting paid millions of dollars to play a game, that are constantly coached to play complete games, play by play. With these pro athletes it generally is not about physical talent, it is a desire to play and putting in the daily hard work. It is not Nitpicking to expect a team to play a complete game, week in and week out. I DID NOT SAY A PERFECT GAME. If each player simply does his job on the play, not doing anymore than that, then complete games should be normal. So really it is about the HEART- Desire and Willingness to learn + Effort = complete games. It is not Nitpicking, it is expected to simply play from your heart. I know that there are many many variables involved in life, but when you are paid millions of dollars to play a game as a grown man in the NFL, having a willingness to learn and play hard is not Nitpicking, it is why a team pays the player to play.
And as we can see, Brady thinks it is normal to play with HEART, play in and play out. It is not Nitpicking to play with excellence. What some call nitpicking others call greatness, or excellence. That does not mean PERFECTION, that simply playing from your heart each play, with no stupid attitudes, not making excuses for being unwilling to learn and get better. A perfect heart does not mean there are not mistakes, it means you are willing to learn and get better every play, that if you make a mistake, you will simply keep on keep learning and applying what you learn, that is not Nitpicking, that is excellence.
Again Brady, who is NOT perfect, and a FORMER 6th round draft pick, is a great example of of simply being the right way day in and day out as a professional athlete.
GO BUCS!!!!!!
June 17th, 2021 at 11:26 pm
I agree there was one complete game. The complete games im looking for are solid consistent performances from the offense and defense for more than a half. To me it seemed as if one unit rolled while the other struggled many times during the season. Glad we got the wins, hope we get them a bit easier this season. Still see upside.
June 17th, 2021 at 11:54 pm
I would say one of them has to be the lions game… no punt return TD = shutout… when was the last time the Bucs shut out an opponent? The 49ers back in like 2009?
June 18th, 2021 at 10:19 am
I hate to nit pick but
August what was that? Are you anonymous? Lol that was weird
Go Bucs
June 18th, 2021 at 11:15 am
lol Rico yeah it got sent without the Name and Email lol lol
June 18th, 2021 at 12:02 pm
I thought this all season. We never had games where I felt that ALL phases showed up. It was offense/no defense, defense/no offense…
It really was the SB where we shined as a complete team, IMO.
Just let that sink in. We’re the Champs and didn’t even play our best football!!!