Shaq Says He Understands Alienated Bucs Fans
February 6th, 2020
How many fans have the Bucs lost through the past dozen years?
Remember when Bucs gear was seen everywhere, and middle school kids weren’t afraid of ridicule for being fans of the hometown team?
Ownership-sanctioned TV blackouts, incessant home losing, dumping good players for no good reason, bad drafts, more bad drafts, star players getting suspended for drugs and inappropriate behavior, signing money-first free agents, those are just some pieces to the lost-fans puzzle.
Buccaneers sacks legend Shaq Barrett feels the pain of fans, even though he’s new to the Tampa Bay party.
Shaq explained on CBS Sports Radio that the fan in him understands the consequences of endless bad football.
“I talk to a lot of fans, and the fans, they just seem like they have hope but it’s been the same thing year after year after year,” Barrett said. “It’s like something going to have to change eventually. We gotta improve eventually. They can’t just keep coming in and having a 7-9, 8-8 seasons. Like we give’em hope every year, but then we take it a way. We give them enough hope for them to want to come back next year. So we got to just put it together. Because I know as a fan I’m not going to keep going to seeing my team lose every game, lose every year. Y’all gotta do something to make me want to come there.”
Kudos to Shaq for keeping it real.
Joe liked when Shaq said, ‘We gotta improve eventually.’ Sometimes Joe feels like that’s the leadership theme of Team Glazer and Jason Licht.
February 6th, 2020 at 10:41 am
This guy should be the face of the franchise NOT Winston. Pay the man!
February 6th, 2020 at 10:48 am
Looks like players starting to see rationale and promulgate it publicly for why Winston isn’t going to get them any further than mediocre at best.
Agreed, Shaq is the Brooks/Sapp style face of the franchise. No QB around to belly up to that tough task. “Want to” and failing is not it–Winston.
February 6th, 2020 at 10:48 am
Shoot all I know is WinStunned is a darn menace to society. He needs to go, we need Phillip Rivers or another respectable QB like Tom Brady, Andy Dalton.
February 6th, 2020 at 10:52 am
Great player with an awesome understanding….gotta love him!
February 6th, 2020 at 11:07 am
Joe do t forget REALLY BAD general managers… AKA Mark Dominek and Jason Licht.
February 6th, 2020 at 11:20 am
Lol one of the Joes literally edited my comment and pasted it. Way to push your agenda Joe!
Joe does that all the time. Joe absolutely is interested in having the board here stay on football-related arguments. This is not a wild-west comment section. Never has been. Hundreds of comments a day don’t make it because they get into hate speech, implied racism, politics and many more things that Joe’s advertisers — and Joe — aren’t interested in getting involved in. There are many other sites for that.–Joe
February 6th, 2020 at 11:42 am
If the Bucs want to get some of their lost fans back and put folks in all of those empty seats at Ray Jay, they need to get another QB.
February 6th, 2020 at 11:48 am
I hear ya and amen Shaq….. but I don’t remember too many 7-9 or 8-8 seasons!
Our comfort zone record is 5-11.
February 6th, 2020 at 11:55 am
In one ear and out the other. This teams management and ownership could give two sh|ts about us fans. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. We’ll just ram Winston down their throats whether they like it or not. We make our revenue in spite of fan participation.
February 6th, 2020 at 11:55 am
I’m beginning to like sack Barrett more and more i hear this guy play and talk! Truly a humble leader
February 6th, 2020 at 11:57 am
Everyone have there opinions on Winston. I’m a season ticket holder since 1999 (5 seats) and hope that Winston is my QB for years to come. It’s not Winston that has caused us so many loosing seasons. Winston has kept us in games, so remember it’s a team game and our defense just started pulling their weight during the second half of last season.
February 6th, 2020 at 12:01 pm
^^^^I have 10 seats and not a one of us want Winston back.
February 6th, 2020 at 12:04 pm
How does every comment section immediately turn into a Jameis bashing? yall need to get a life. there are other things to talk about. We will deal with Jameis when the time comes… jeez give it a rest.
February 6th, 2020 at 12:05 pm
Winston has kept us in games
—————-
Sure, he’s kept us in games AND 100+ turnovers in 5 years says Winston is a big part of the reason we have been losing over that same time span also. If you are going to tell the story, tell the WHOLE story, not just what you want us to hear.
February 6th, 2020 at 12:19 pm
The story is also we had the worse defense for any 3-year period before getting better the second have of last year. Is that Jameis’ fault that we couldn’t stop the run or pass and also couldn’t kick a field goal? No it wasn’t. It takes a team to win games and Jameis can only be blamed for what he controlled. Not giving up 30 points a game as our defense has done.
February 6th, 2020 at 12:34 pm
BucBoy … “It’s not Winston that has caused us so many loosing seasons.” Partially agree, partially disagree BucBoy. Yes he’s “kept us in games” at times. At other times, he single-handedly took us OUT of games (Falcons’ game?).
Agree totally that football’s a TEAM GAME, and precisely because of that any number of plays during the game by any number of players can represent the margin of victory … or defeat. It’s not ALL on Jameis, but he has contributed his share.
Also can’t agree that “our defense just started pulling its’ weight during the second half of the season”. Yes we had a incredibly young and thus inexperienced Secondary last year, and as a consequence our defense struggled especially in the 1st half of the season. But look again at just the first 2 games:
o Game 1: We lost 31-17 but our defense only gave up 17 points (pretty good IMO against the eventual SB runner-up). And oh BTW, our offense gave the ball away FOUR times in 11 drives … 3 of those TOs were INTs and TWO of those were Pick-6s.
o Game 2: We won 20-14 but our defense only gave up 12 points. And BTW, our defense held the Panthers to 4 FGs and 0 TDs without White (and without JPP obviously).
Yes our defense had a lot of growing pains, as should’ve been expected. But they didn’t roll over & play dead in any game, even when our own offense was committing 41 giveaways on the season … 2.5 TOs per game average. Want to guess who most of those giveaways came from? Want to also guess who paid the price for those? (Hint: It wasn’t Mr. Almost MVP, aka, Mr Entertainment … it was our DEFENSE).
February 6th, 2020 at 12:37 pm
Let’s make this KRYSTAL KLEAR…we are FANS and with that comes the right to purchase a ticket (or not) and to set in the stands and BOOO as loud or CHEER as loud as your voice will allow…GO crazy a little bit but if you cross a certain line you will be shown the EXIT!! As FANS we do not I said do not determine what player goes or stays. Fans have to let the off season process take its course…and when it does….we can do what fans do…GO BUCS …GO JL AND BA !!!
February 6th, 2020 at 12:37 pm
This guy is the best thing to happen to this team in a long time. Sign him for a long time.
February 6th, 2020 at 1:05 pm
You sprung.
One year.
diggler Says:
February 6th, 2020 at 10:41 am
This guy should be the face of the franchise NOT Winston. Pay the man!
February 6th, 2020 at 1:51 pm
Outside of Fl. its hard to find fans wearing the Bucs stuff. I live out West. And when I do rarely see somebody with a Bucs hat or Jersey, I always stop and chat with them. Met a couple friends that way. If we won more, fans would not be so embarraseed out of the Bay area to sport our merchandise. Just sayin, we gotta start winning sometime right?i
February 6th, 2020 at 2:20 pm
@ DR
Perfectly put. I will never understand how people can overlook turnovers, blame entirely the defense without understanding how INTs and pick 6’s directly impact the score or maybe they just dont want to understand so they can live in this world where Winston is the greatest thing ever and all his faults are entirely due to everyone else.
February 6th, 2020 at 3:00 pm
@Doosh
“Our comfort zone record is 5-11”
Your comment had me dying LOL. So sad but so true…
February 6th, 2020 at 3:37 pm
Winston is not the problem with this spitty team. Ownership is the obvious problem. That said, Winston wants like 40 trillion dollars.
I trust the owners and their lackeys will completely screw the pooch on this, just like they’ve done consistently for over a decade.
The Bucs are batting 1000 for terrible, poorly thought out and poorly executed executive decisions
February 6th, 2020 at 6:46 pm
@Howard, gotta remember Barrett, Suh and (eventually) Perriman were solid executive decisions that they made as well. Not everything Licht and Co touch turns to s#@t. That said, the Bucs are 34-62 on Licht’s watch, so something needs to give at some point.
Barrett’s not wrong though, this franchise is definitely in need of a jolt instead of the status quo. Maybe signing a bridge vet QB other than JW, drafting a rookie to groom, adding a quality RB, and re-signing key guys on D to continue their resurgence can spark that change.
February 6th, 2020 at 9:04 pm
Howard Cosell Says
“The Bucs are batting 1000 for terrible, poorly thought out and poorly executed executive decisions.”
I don’t think the facts back that up. Maybe in regard to coaching staff, but player-wise they have not been terrible.
People have to remember that Jason Licht started off as a rookie GM. The first Head Coach he worked with was hired before he was. Dirk Koetter wasn’t a bad hire. He did raise the offense to a top ten offense (in yards). Unfortunately, the Glazers let Koetter choose the DC, so Licht had no choice there either.
On top of that, Lovie Smith even chose which QB to draft.
And when you draft a QB with the first overall pick, you HAVE to build around him. So Licht had to give the offense priority.
Not to mention it is harder to build an offense than a defense. Case in point, it took years to build our Top 5 offense, but Bowles built and all new defense in one season.
February 6th, 2020 at 9:04 pm
On the topic of Barrett, I really like the guy.