Bucs Victimized By Bottom-5 Roster Declaration
June 7th, 2023
Shot fired at GM Jason Licht.
Joe realizes the world stops moving for some NFL fans when the high priest of the PFF Tribe, aka Pro Football Focus, does his weekly address.
Joe is referering to Sam Monson, who takes off his priestly garb to address his minions every week on YouTube.
Today’s subject was a very deep dive on roster quality across the NFL. The great news is that not one Buccaneers rival in the NFC South ranked in the top-16. The bad news is the Bucs also did not rank in the upper half of NFL rosters. The even-worse news is the PFF Tribe data says the Bucs have the 28th-best — or fifth-worst — roster in the NFL.
The Tribe has spoken.
Joe’s not sure what to say, other than Joe now has even less respect for the PFF Tribe (if that was even possible). And damn was Joe surprised to see the Packers at No. 27. That’s a talented football team.
Monson held firm on ranking the Bucs in the NFL dumpster.
“You can debate with these things how much you have to value the quarterback, but when your quarterbacks on the roster are Baker Mayfield and Kyle Trask, you can’t really escape the bottom five rosters in the NFL,” Monson said.
Joe sure hopes the Bucs aren’t one of the NFL front offices paying the PFF Tribe for basic quality control duties.
June 7th, 2023 at 12:00 pm
I’m too lazy to do a deep dive but weird analysis when you have The Washington Commanders at 17 with Sam Howell / Jacoby Brisset at QB lol.
To be fair they have a decent roster but it’s comparable to ours. Great defenses, solid skill players, and probably similar O-line but that’s more of a “?”.
If they are 17 we should be top 20. Or if we are bottom 5 so should Washington. IMO
June 7th, 2023 at 12:01 pm
Put a proven franchise QB on that roster and same people would put us in the top half of the league. It’s ridiculous… like everything else this time of year…
Ranking, wanking, rating, hating, predicting… blah blah blah… it’s all crap.
June 7th, 2023 at 12:05 pm
So, based on their “justification” we have a bottom 5 quarterback situation, not a bottom 5 roster situation. They essentially say, “if you QBs are Kyler Traskfield you can’t escape bottom 5”. So even if we had top 3 roster in every other unit, we’d be bottom 5?
Let’s try this, just as a fun offseason experiment. We can even make it simpler and just play bottom half or top half:
OFFENSE:
QB = Bottom
WR = Top
RB = Bottom
OL = Bottom (until it proves otherwise)
DEFENSE:
LB = Top
DBs = Top
Safeties = Top
DL = Top (assuming Shaq is back)
I mean, if half our team is in the top half of the league (at least) how can we be a bottom 5 roster?
June 7th, 2023 at 12:13 pm
I’d agree with Greg except for assessment of O-line. We have too many good parts to be considered bottom. We were average last season and at least as good as Winston’s last line in 2019 when LT was Smith, LG Marpet, C Jensen, RG Kappa, RT Dotson. Wirfs will be excellent wherever he lines up, the G Filer from the Chargers is more than competent, C Jensen is Jensen and if he isn’t great, Hainsey is competent, RG will be as competent as Cappa was, and at RT is our biggest question mark with Goedeke… who may be competent. The only really good players on the 2019 line were Marpet and Jensen. the rest were merely competent. This line currently qualifies as average until they prove otherwise.
June 7th, 2023 at 12:30 pm
Licht is a GM that steered this team to a losing record in every single season that did not have a Brady in it; the guy would have been fired had Tahmmy not stopped by to spin the pigskin around for a few years. Below .500 GMs build below .500 rosters and draft kickers that do not stick on rosters
June 7th, 2023 at 12:45 pm
All these rankings & predictions are starting to wear me out……very boring……we desperately need to play a game or two before any of them make any sense.
June 7th, 2023 at 12:50 pm
They really just hate Baker Mayfield
June 7th, 2023 at 1:00 pm
Just shows they are no better at guessing the quality of rosters preseason , than they are at guessing draft picks pre draft.
June 7th, 2023 at 1:03 pm
Giants at 23 really jumps out. They were good last year.
June 7th, 2023 at 1:04 pm
Add in the rank of the coaching roster. The sum of the two rosters equals disaster.
June 7th, 2023 at 1:23 pm
Just remember that all these national media “experts” as well as the Las Vegas oddsmakers had the Bucs in and winning the Super Bowl last year at this time. And had the Eagles no better than middle of the pack and sure to yank their crappy quarterback by the end of the first month of the season.
Gee – sure looks to me like all these “experts” aren’t experts at all, and believe that an NFL team roster is 99% quarterback and all the other 21 starters together come to maybe 1% of the roster. And they also are lousy evaluators of quarterbacks.
June 7th, 2023 at 1:26 pm
If the Bucs OLine plays well this year I predict a middle of the road season.
Mayfield will surprise some people if he gets protection
June 7th, 2023 at 1:40 pm
There are a lot of intangibles that simply don’t lend themselves to statistics.
June 7th, 2023 at 1:48 pm
Well said Dusthty …!!!
June 7th, 2023 at 2:03 pm
After Game 1, no one’s gonna remember where PFF Tribe ranked the Bucs. Or any other team for that matter. Come to think of it, no one will remember tomorrow where the PFF Tribe ranked the Bucs. Kinda makes it useless information.
Except the Bucs secondary spoke for months in 2020 about how a preseason ranking of having the 32nd-best cornerbacks fueled their fire and impacted the team. Heck, Tom Brady even said he sended offensive linemen media comments about how they were being evaluated. If the players care, and Joe knows the coaches and front office types care, then Joe is interested in sharing.
Danged, if there was only a way to get back the minute or two that it took to read and digest that article. Nope, can’t think of one.
June 7th, 2023 at 2:10 pm
Keep the bottom feeder predictions coming. As I remember N.O. was picked to win the division over us last year even with Tom Brady. They finished 3rd. Can’t wait till they play the games.
June 7th, 2023 at 2:21 pm
Dusthty Rhothdes … I love this BS.
“Licht is a GM that steered this team to a losing record in every single season that did not have a Brady”
Didn’t Licht get Brady? But what, you don’t want to give him credit for it? Wouldn’t the Chief’s GM suck if they didn’t have Mahomes? Wouldn’t any team suck without it’s stars? The GM brings in the players that make the team good. Licht brought in TB12 and they won a SB. TB12 came here because the team was loaded. All Licht’s doing.
June 7th, 2023 at 2:23 pm
Aren’t these the same groups that pick the frickin Dallas Cowgirls to go to the Super Bowl
June 7th, 2023 at 2:39 pm
it is offseason click bait ,Defense Rules … thats all it is….
June 7th, 2023 at 3:27 pm
Sly Pirate,
I certainly appreciate your comment, however, I believe Licht is responsible for getting Arians, and Arians directed Licht on the talent. Brady came here because of the talent and Arians offensive coaching style. I am not sure we were Brady’s first choice….but inthe end, it all worked out and it really does not matter.
Without Arians here, Licht is unemployed.
Time to turn the page.
June 7th, 2023 at 4:35 pm
‘Joe sure hopes the Bucs aren’t one of the NFL front offices paying the PFF Tribe for basic quality control duties.’
Apparently neither of us thinks much of the PFF Tribe’s contributions to the NFL world. But hey, if it serves a purpose as motivational bulletin board material for the players, then hey, maybe it’s got a useful purpose after all Joe.
June 7th, 2023 at 4:57 pm
cornelius, i agree and great point. all i can come up with is offensive line and running back ratings they might have drastically different, and they might be excluding shaq barrett or jensen etc to some extent
June 7th, 2023 at 6:15 pm
PFF junk news in the off season.
June 7th, 2023 at 8:37 pm
PFF makes some fairly interesting reads as long as they lay off the meaningless mumbo-jumbo. As far as prognostication ability…it’s a coin toss like everybody else.
June 7th, 2023 at 10:56 pm
Hey Joe please set a reminder for end of next season and call out these bozos if they are completely 100% wrong. They can spew all this garbage and are never held to account for it when they are wrong.
If they used Baker Mayfield’s ratings from Carolina, then of course he’s going to stink by their assessments. And did they include Ryan Jensen or skip him because he was out last season and consider him as good as a league minimum player? Gah.
June 7th, 2023 at 11:30 pm
So is anybodyy out there beside nut job Kyle Brandt not on for the flavor of the week bash the Bucs contest?
June 8th, 2023 at 8:57 am
Baker Mayfield stunk up the field last year. Bucs deserve this evaluation.
June 8th, 2023 at 1:31 pm
It is not a wrong ranking in their part. But the good thing is, we have drafted some good young talent that fit the head coach’s philosophy on defense to a T. We also have a prove it or beat it scenario for the head coach and the QBs. Hopefully that will get the best out of this bunch.
June 8th, 2023 at 2:30 pm
Baker acts like a natural alpha, which drives all the betas in the media nutty. “Toxic arrogance” or “toxic masculinity,” they think. Other players seem to like it because they are mostly alphas, too.
June 9th, 2023 at 11:24 am
Larrd. Baker Mayfield has been trash .