“Underrated By Everyone”
July 8th, 2025
So a deep and too-long dive into every NFL team’s offense yielded a bold proclamation about the state of the Bucs’ 2025 attack.
Over the course of weeks, former Bucs scout and Jets assistant coach and personnel director Pat Kirwan compares and contrasts every team’s position group on SiriusXM NFL Radio with his co-host, retired NFL quarterback Jim Miller, a former Bucs backup.
It’s exhausting. The duo grade each unit.
Yesterday, after finishing that exercise for every position on offense, the duo revealed their top-5 NFL offenses for 2025.
Undaunted, apparently, by rookie Bucs playcaller Josh Grizzard, Kirwan is confident Tampa Bay has the third-best offense in the game.
“Underrated by everyone including me. We always kind of talk of ’em as Chapter 2 in a one-chapter book. ‘Oh yeah, in Tampa. They were pretty good.’ Well, they were better than pretty good,” Kirwan said.
“You start looking at where were they Top-5 in the National Football League? Well, let’s start with points. They were No. 4 in points scored. They were No. 3 in total offense. They were No. 4 in passing yards a game. While being No. 4 in passing yards, they also were No. 4 in running yards. Total complete offense — that’s how I saw them. Again, the study that we did and just putting ourselves in position of looking at them through the lens of, you know, position groups in rooms forced me to see how good they were, and how much we didn’t see them.”
Kirwan want on to talk about he might have swapped the Bucs with the Lions (ranked No. 2) if the Bucs had better offensive line depth or a more impressive No. 1 tight end. He had the Ravens ranked No. 1 overall and the Bills at No. 4 followed by the Eagles. Miller had the Bucs as the No. 5 offense.
Joe’s got concerns about Grizzard’s learning curve. As Sage JoeBucsFan.com columnist Ira Kaufman asks, “Can Josh Grizzard screw this up?” The answer is, “probably not,” because the Bucs are that loaded on offense.
Joe will frame it like this. If Liam Coen was returning as coordinator, Joe would wager on the Bucs repeating as a top-5 offense.
July 8th, 2025 at 2:52 pm
rANK THEM AT #1 IF YOU WANT BUT OF THE tOP 25
July 8th, 2025 at 2:57 pm
“Can Josh Grizzard screw this up?”
Doubtful but YES.
Look what Leftwhich did when he took over from Arians. An assistant coach working in the same system. Should have been seamless but BL totally nuked one of the best offenses in the league.
July 8th, 2025 at 3:01 pm
Not worried about Grizz play calling at all. Maybe if he had a rookie QB, but Baker is an NFL vet with a lot of say in the play calling. Baker also can change plays at the line.
July 8th, 2025 at 3:09 pm
Rank them #1 if you want but the reality is of the Top 25 Scoring Offenses in League History only 3 have won Championships that season including the 2024 Bills, 2024 Lions and 2021 Bucs.
Bucs were a touchdown and a 2 point conversion away from claiming spot 25 last season and the chance of a top 25 offense winning a Championship would still be 3/25 or 12% today.
Problem with running an offense at full throttle is the opposition gets the ball more often and defense gets shorter rest between series.
Having the fastest car at Indy means nothing if you have a driver that will put it into the wall on Lap 195.
July 8th, 2025 at 3:23 pm
uhh ooh…there they are…the fantasy island unis…
lookin’ like mr. rourke and tattoo
July 8th, 2025 at 3:25 pm
L I G H T T H A T F U S E A L R E A D Y!!!!!!
July 8th, 2025 at 3:26 pm
whaaooow it really is like rourke and tattoo…
all the way down to the black sox…
to match their black tie & black bowtie…i never realized that
July 8th, 2025 at 3:26 pm
Lelfwhich could call BAs system fine but he could adapt to anything new once it was figured out. That would be like Grizz coming in and calling everything like ‘24 Coen’s offense. It would be exposed by half the teams you play this year and everyone the next. We know that’s not gonna happen. The only real question is how good of a game day play caller is Grizz? And How long will it take him to get there?
I prefer going in to the season under the radar. This offseason it seems the more people reflect on the ‘24 season and moves since the more they realize they’re sleeping on the Bucs.
July 8th, 2025 at 3:28 pm
IMHO , just about every team is very close to being SuperBowl ready , just take a look at the 23 and 24 Eagles , what a difference a year and a few tweaks make! Key Injuries , surprising subpar or exceptional play , and a few coaching changes have to be figured in and won’t be fully recognized before the season actually gets underway.
July 8th, 2025 at 3:31 pm
My biggest fear is that 2 teams in our division have 2 HCs who recently were both privy to all of our scheming and insider knowledge.
July 8th, 2025 at 3:37 pm
Leftwich used about 60% less Brain Power than Grizzard uses while sleeping.
July 8th, 2025 at 3:46 pm
maybe the offense will falter on 1st and 2nd downs and crush the 3rd downs, that was Griz specialty last year
July 8th, 2025 at 4:08 pm
Fan of the South … ‘Problem with running an offense at full throttle is the opposition gets the ball more often and defense gets shorter rest between series’
Last year’s Bucs offense scored 502 points, 2nd-highest by any Bucs’ team if I remember correctly and 154 points MORE than our offense scored in 2023.
And yet … our average Time of Possession (TOP) actually INCREASED from 29:35 mins in 2023 to a whopping 31:41 mins in 2024. So we scored far more points and in the process held onto the ball over 2 minutes MORE per game on average, decreasing the amount of time our defense had to be on the field. Bizarre isn’t it.
Go back to 2020 however and our TOP decreased by almost 2 minutes from 30:54 mins in 2019 to 29:06 mins using BA’s Bombs Away philosophy. That’s not exactly what we were doing last year.
July 8th, 2025 at 4:39 pm
loading up on talent from the draft rather than going developmental like after the super bowl should pay off big.
the extra wr should help all 3 starters that got hurt last year.
db sb better and edge too.
i like our strategy
July 8th, 2025 at 5:00 pm
Cricket Baker, what 2 teams have head coaches in our division that were recently both privy to our scheming and insider knowledge??? One of them was Canales, that was 2 years ago, who is the other one you are referring to?
July 8th, 2025 at 6:33 pm
Defense Rules, Fan of the South sounds like he’s saying that we should slow down on the scoring. Thanks for pointing out some of his erroneous thinking. But the point he’s trying to make is that Baker is a choker. “Having the fastest car at Indy means nothing if you have a driver who will put it into the wall in lap 195”. Come on Fan of the South! Say what you mean! We’re big boys, we can take it! There have always been a good number of people that didn’t care for Mayfields game and nothing wrong with that. Just say it out loud dude instead of whispering it in a jumbled word salad like you do so well.
July 8th, 2025 at 6:47 pm
If Coen was returning, I’d bet on the Bucs as a top 2 offense – maybe getting nudged out by the Ravens – maybe.
If Grizzard just keeps doing what Coen was doing, the offense will be just fine. However if Grizz lets all the wonder boy media hype go to his head and think he needs to improve the offense – well, best of luck, but history says that is going to backfire bigly.