CBSSports.com Previews Jets-Bucs
December 11th, 2009Click on the video below and you will see one of the best, most in-depth previews of the Jets-Bucs game that Joe has seen.
In short, former Jets front office executive Pat Kirwan, appearing with co-host Jason Horowitz, claims the Bucs should be more worried about bootleg passes from Kellen Clemens than Thomas Jones or Shonn Green, and explains in detail why.
Kirwan, in addition to his CBSSports.com duties has a weekday show on Sirius NFL Radio and a weekly column on NFL.com, also has some harsh words, indirectly, for Bucs offensive coordinator Greg Olson’s playcalling (where have you read that before?) and Bucs defrocked defensive coordinator Jim Bates.
Near the end, Kirwan springs a surprise as well.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Kirwan is a ‘big fan of freeman’? Please. Didn’t he crucify us over the selection? Joe, I know you like Kirwan, but he flops more than a fish out of water. At least he picks the Bucs.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Jeff:
Joe believes you are thinking of Adam Schein.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I like Josh Freeman a lot and I think the kid has a ton of potential. However its disturbing to me that the media seems to be in an echo chamber about him. What Kirwan said about Freeman not being bothered about his performance last week throwing those interceptions was almost verbatim what John Lynch said DURINIG the game after the first of Freeman’s 5 interceptions. For anybody who still has it on dvr, go back and watch it and listen to Lynch say after that first interception how Freeman wouldn’t get flustered and wouldn’t throw any more. It one thing to like the kid, its another to read from some preordained script. Rookie QBs throw tons of interceptions, its what they do. That is the norm, the exception is when they don’t. So anybody who is absolutely conviniced that Freeman won’t throw an INT against the Jets who have one of the top corners in the league is either hitting the bottle a little too hard or reading from a press release. I don’t necessarily think Freeman will have the kind of game against the Panthers and the Bucs do have a good chance of winning this game, but Kirwan’s comments about Freeman come across like somebody in the Bucs’ PR department wrote them for the guy.
Just sayin.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Steve:
A little background on Kirwan-Freeman:
Freeman has been on Kirwan’s radio show a couple of times and Kirwan visits Tampa often as he has a house in Naples and he and Bruce Allen are best of friends. Two weeks ago in one of his videos Kirwan said he had a sit down with Freeman a couple of days prior and peppered him with all sorts of questions and came away impressed with how he puts aside bad performances.
Joe loves John Lynch but it’s quite possible Kirwan has spoken with Freeman as much as Lynch has.
December 11th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Kirwan has some inclination towards Bucs for sure, but he gives a good reasoning to why the game is not totally one sided as many of BSPN or NY think. Rushing game is a big threat when it has some formidable pass offense to go with it, but look at Carolina’s game, when ever there was a 3rd and long, Bucs did a great job of taking care of pass. The one-gap T2 scheme the Bucs utilize has been and still is deadly on 3rd and long. We can’t deny that the pass rush has improved by many folds since Bucs went to one gap scheme and how ever good a rushing game is, with a bad QB all that is needed is 2 tackles on RBs and get a 3rd and 5+. How ever good the RBs are, there is a 95% chance Jets will go for a pass on 3rd and 5+ and that is where Bucs defense has been doing great last two weeks.
I like our chances, i think there is a 50% chance Bucs win this one.