NFL is not the Big Ten.

All-Pro left tackle Tristan Wirfs is on his way to becoming a Bucs legend.

He was already a legend at Iowa when he stepped in as a rookie for the Bucs in 2020 and dominated at right tackle blocking for Tom Brady.

While appearing with Ari Meirov of The33rdTeam recently, Wirfs explained one of the biggest things he had to get used to in the NFL was, unlike at Iowa, you could lose two or more games and your season isn’t remotely over.

“It was pretty insane, like, looking back on it now, like, at the time, I didn’t really know how crazy it was,” Wirfs said of his rookie season. “I mean, we lost, we lost like, three or four in a row there for a while or a little stretch?

“And I was like, in college, you know, coming from college, you lose two — for us at Iowa, it was like, you lose two and we’re out of the big race for the Big 10 championship.

“So, like, we lost two that year. And I was like, ‘We can’t — we’re done.’ And then we, you know, [coaches] come in, they’re like, ‘We can still do.’ We lost three. They said the same thing. ‘We can still do we want to do.’ We lost four. I was like, ‘This has to be it.’ But they said, ‘We still do we want to do.'”

To be fair to Wirfs, the Bucs that season never lost more than two games in a row. In November 2020, the Bucs did lose three out of four games. And the Bucs didn’t lose their fourth game until late November.

(In a subsequent sitdown on “The Pivot” podcast, Wirfs recounted the same story only he identified then-Bucs coach Bucco Bruce Arians as the coach who repeatedly reminded the team, “We can still do what we want to do.”)

After the Bucs’ Week 13 bye, they never lost another game, racking up eight straight victories to win the Super Bowl.

“It’s like looking back on it now, it was insane,” Wirfs said. “Three road games against three former MVPs [in the playoffs], you know, then to have a home Super Bowl? It’s unbelievable like it’s storybook stuff.

“So looking back on it, it’s just incredible. But um, yeah, that was a wild year.”

Joe thought it was cool that of all the things Wirfs learned as a rookie, he mentioned losing more than two games is no reason to panic or throw in the towel and the NFL is a sprint and not a marathon.

Even though the Bucs finished with a sprint and a Vince Lombardi Trophy.