Were The Bucs Better In 2024 Than In 2023? Jason Licht Answers.
February 28th, 2025
Buccaneers Ring of Honor general manager Jason Licht has few peers in the NFL.
Not counting the two NFL owners that make personnel decisions, only three GMs have been in their jobs longer than Licht, per Joe’s quick count.
The Bucs’ boss has had great success after a rocky start.
So Licht knows what a winner looks like, and during his candid chat this week on the Ira Kaufman Podcast (yes, Joe got a finger-wagging), Licht was adamant that the 2024 Bucs were better than the prior year’s edition.
Even though the 2023 Bucs were a Todd Bowles timeout and a Hail Mary magic from pushing their divisional round playoff game at Detroit into overtime, Licht says last season’s Bucs were the better club — injuries and all.
Licht agonized after the season and part of that was tied to the quality of his team.
“Anytime in my career, whatever position I’m in, the end of the year sucks,” Licht said. “You have a pit in your stomach, I do at least, for a good solid month unless you win the whole thing. And even if you go to the Super Bowl and lose, it’s the same feeling that you’re just dejected and borderline depressed for a period of time. So that was no different this year. And trust me, I don’t know if we would have beaten the Eagles. We have had some success; I’m 7-1 versus [Philadelphia] since they hired me, but who’s counting?
“Because I felt like we had a better team this year than [in 2023], but we didn’t make it as far as we did last year.”
Joe could argue the Bucs were a better team at the end of the 2023 season, but Joe thinks there’s no clear answer.
Joe followed up with Licht and he held firm on his nod to the 2024 team.
“I felt that way. I felt like the offense was humming. I felt like we had a better offense,” Licht said. “We did have some injuries but we were overcoming them a little bit.
“I tell Todd [Bowles] all the time, when there’s a lot of injuries and there’s a lot of what-are-we-going-to-do uncertainty because of a rash of injuries, especially like at one or two positions, he always seems to come up with a really good plan. And I felt like we could have had a chance to do some damage.”
Ahhh, what could have been. Joe suffers for weeks after the end of a season, too, barring a Super Bowl.
February 28th, 2025 at 1:47 am
Kind of have to wonder what a fuller healthy Bucs team could have done.
February 28th, 2025 at 3:07 am
Offense was better
Defence was worse
Special Teams a Mess
February 28th, 2025 at 4:25 am
Jason Licht … ‘I felt like the offense was humming. I felt like we had a better offense. We did have some injuries but we were overcoming them a little bit.’
I can see why he feels that 2024 Bucs were better than the 2023 Bucs. Our offense made a major improvement, going from a #20 offense (scoring 348 points – 20.5 PPG average) in 2023 to a #4 offense (scoring 502 points – 29.5 PPG average) in 2024. That’s a gigantic improvement.
Unfortunately most of the injuries we suffered seem to have been more on the defensive side of the ball. Our defense regressed, going from #7 defense (allowing only 325 points – 19.1 PPG average) in 2023 to a #16 defense (allowing 385 points – 22.6 PPG average) in 2024. That’s a significant regression IMO.
On balance though I agree with JL: our 2024 team was slightly better than our 2023 team. We had a very good draft, and we’ve got more to build with in preparing for 2025. If we can fix our defense & get back into the Top-10, we can do some damage this year, and hopefully compete for the Super Bowl.
February 28th, 2025 at 5:59 am
Agree with JL.
Good points Bonzai and DR. We had a good draft and injuries did not help us.
February 28th, 2025 at 6:55 am
Better in 2024
February 28th, 2025 at 6:56 am
Bucs
Better in 2024
February 28th, 2025 at 8:57 am
So I’ve been a Bucs fan basically my whole life, moving across the country when I was 13 to LasVegas and getting picked on for wearing a cream sickle starter jacket in 9th grade and even then in 1990 most people in Las Vegas were LA Raider fans. And I’d have to say every year at the end of the season feeling extremely disappointed in there performance until Dungy came to coach and we started winning when I was in my early 20’s especially in 99” when we lost to the Rams in the NFC Championship what was called the Bert Emmanuel game. I had a sinking pit feeling in my stomach every year after when we didn’t perform as expected except for the Super Bowl years. I’m back living in Tampa and have season tickets. I’m an extremely Proud fan.
February 28th, 2025 at 10:28 am
Cool story of your fan history, Proud.
February 28th, 2025 at 11:33 am
Very real possibility Godwin goes
And what if the Bucs do the safe cheap route in FA or focus on signing Skule, Bredeson, JJ Russell, extending Goedeke and Otten and not really adding any impact players that might hinder the progress of Braswell, Dennis, or Izien
Question is will this team regress in 25? Sickening thought