Tampa Bay has a chance to wash away years of pain, but if history has showed us anything it’s that no pirate pillage is promised.
Picture yourself sitting in a dark room. Each year it gets colder and darker. There’s light somewhere in or around this room but you can’t see it. All of your friends — old ones from Green Bay, new ones from New England, even the Manning boys — have seen it. So you know it’s there. You’re confined to sitting and waiting for this magnificent light to shine down. And it won’t.
That’s what it is like to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan. Cold and lonely, sitting in a dark room thinking about how the law of averages — not actual skill — will one-day bail you out. It’s not romantic. It’s gritty, grungy and it could be about to change.
In football, you don’t sit around waiting for things to balance out. You either go out and get yours or get out of the way while others do it instead. This is the season the Buccaneers — franchise quarterback and staunch defense in tow — are going to decide which of those two paths they will follow.
Since winning the Super Bowl in 2003, the Buccaneers have turned in one of the most pathetic, limp-willed football experiences of the last decade. Following the Super Bowl win, Tampa never again made it past the Wild Card round of the playoffs and simply stopped showing up to the postseason altogether after 2007-08. George Bush was still president, Miley Cyrus was still Hannah Montana, and Adam Sandler was still making movies that were released in actual theaters. It has been nine long, tumultuous years since Tampa Bay has been anything remotely close to good and even longer since they’ve legitimately made a run at a title.
All of that is so close to getting blown away; the literal dusting off of the old glory days. Pundits across football are making the Bucs the chic pick to take things to the next level.
They’re not wrong. Tampa has all the makings of a team that should make the playoffs this season.
Jameis Winston is something the team has never had since it was plopped onto the football landscape in 1976: a franchise quarterback. Apologies to Shaun King, Chris Simms, Bruce Gradkowski, Jeff Garcia, Brian Griese, and Josh Freeman — Winston is the first true hope the team has had under center in well over 15-years. Only three quarterbacks in four decades have played five years under center for Tampa Bay. The last guy to do it was Trent Dilfer, whose reign ended in 1999 (Vinny Testaverde and Doug Williams are the other two). All of this isn’t to be masochistic, rather it’s important in fully understanding what is at stake for Tampa with Winston. This isn’t just morning show ad-lib analysis or clichéd bumbling about a player’s development. This is 41 years of collective soul searching that could be coming to an end if Winston can arrive and be the elite quarterback everyone thinks he can be.
[The team] has an almost unsettling aura; excitement tinged with a gentle hum of anxiety
All the chips have been pushed to the center of the table on Jameis. A head coach was fired for him, high draft picks were used on offensive weapons, and tens of millions of dollars have been spent upgrading parts around him on offense. Questions still remain about how it will all fit together. Just four years ago the team seemed to have an offense that might take off but instead blew up on the landing pad. Josh Freeman, LeGarrette Blount, Doug Martin and Kellen Winslow all sounded good on paper but failed to deliver actual results.
Cynically speaking, that could be the case again this year. For everything good about the Buccaneers offense, there’s an Egor cloud hanging over it. Jameis looks poised to become an elite quarterback but continues to make terrible ‘gunslinger’ throws that Brett Favre blushes at. The field stretching combo of Mike Evans and DeSean Jackson sounds great in theory, but can they really coexist and confuse defenses the way we’re expecting? A three-headed monster of Doug Martin, Jaquizz Rodgers, and Chris Sims certainly sounds statistically appealing but can they all stay healthy and productive together? So far, that’s a hard ‘no’.
Unlike the team from a few years ago that failed to live up to expectations, this one seems to have the gusto to claim what is theirs. Winston is an infinitely better leader than Freeman was, and the Bucs might have its best receiver combination since the early 2000s in Evans and Jackson. Add in Cameron Brate and rookie O.J Howard and not only does this team look good now but it looks tomorrow, next month and especially next year.
Another thing this team has is defensive prowess. Defense has always been a strength for the Bucs, and the unit Mike Smith will coordinate this year is uncannily vintage. There’s the superstar defensive tackle, the undersized yet lethal corners, and a pair of hard hitting smash mouth stars in the secondary. Lest we forget the veteran additions who wouldn’t have touched Tampa with a diamond studded pole a few years ago (seriously, T.J. Ward chose Cleveland over Tampa a couple of years ago).
There’s a big difference between simply arriving and actually being good. The Bucs have sniffed success and mainstream acceptance but the team remains an outsider. Before being flexed into a Sunday Night game against Dallas last year, the most national attention Tampa had received was ESPN’s Chris Berman firing off the team’s infamous pirate canons. Thankfully what’s old seems to be new again, but most importantly here to stay.
The team that won a Super Bowl in 2002 wasn’t built to last. Within a few years of hoisting the Lombardi trophy, aging stalwarts like Warren Sapp, John Lynch, and Derrick Brooks were all gone. Brad Johnson, and 11-year veteran at that point, only started one more season. Keyshawn Johnson and Keenan McCardell, who together combined for 17-years of NFL service at the time, were gone after a year; even Jon Gruden lasted just six more seasons before he was walked off the plank.
The team that will take the field in 2017 is a different breed. Winston is only in his third year. All-Pro receiver Mike Evans is in year four. Only one player on the starting offensive line has logged minutes for another franchise, and three were drafted within the last four years. Defensively the team is a mixture of invested veterans (Gerald McCoy/Lavonte David), young studs of the future (Vernon Haergraves III/Kwon Alexander), and mercenaries there to raise hell (T.J. Ward/Chris Baker).
Tampa has an almost unsettling aura; excitement tinged with a gentle hum of anxiety. The Bucs have the buzz that fans remember from the glory days, but with fresher faces on longer timelines. The problem that plagued the almost-great teams of the 90s (a lack of offensive and defensive cohesion) has seemingly been fixed. The 2017 team seems to be all-around operating on the same high-frequency wavelength; something we’ve never seen before. Moreover, the team is fun again. An appearance on HBO Hard Knocks helped bring this to the surface, but the team personality in ways that have been lacking in the past. McCoy is a nerdy family man and soul of the team. Jameis is boisterously larger than life, a throwback to the swagger Warren Sapp oozed into the team’s bloodstream. Not only are things primed to be special, the Bucs seem to finally be a team worth getting behind on every level.
But Bucs fans are well aware: there’s a giant ‘if’ in that equation. For all the hope and promise, it is impossible to overlook the depressing Egor cloud hanging over this franchise, one that has yet to dissipate.
Perhaps this is the year the light finally breaks through.