Way Too Early To Worry About Blocking
July 25th, 2025
Energized.
Look, the Bucs have a damn good offensive line. Maybe top two. It’s a strength, right up there with receiver.
Yes, we are in underwear football still. The pads are scheduled to come on Monday morning. Joe always brings this up because underwear football like nearly flag football — or as Bucs coach Todd Bowles said today after practice, “it’s kind of flag football at this point.”
Today, Joe noticed the defense flying around quite a bit, more so than usual. YaYa Diaby seemed perpetually in the backfield. Baker Mayfield got chased a few times. Kyle Trask doesn’t have to worry about the steps on his Apple Watch daily workout because he’s run for his life.
Even Chris Braswell (!) was camping out semiregularly in the backfield. And Joe noticed a lot of the traffic coming across the line was coming from the offense’s left side.
Uh, oh.
Now Joe knows it is borderline irresponsible to start pulling fire alarms at One Buc Palace over three underwear football practices. Still, Joe was starting to become wary of all these defenders, edge rush or blitz, coming through the left side.
Then Bowles’ words after practice pulled Joe down off the ledge a little.
“Offensive linemen can’t block like they want to,” Bowles said of underwear football.
Bowles is right, it’s irresponsible to make sweeping conclusions after just three underwear football practices. That’s not right.
But next week, when the pads slap, Joe will pay closer attention.
July 25th, 2025 at 11:51 am
If Wirfs injury a complete tear of the MCL that he recently had repaired, then he is likely out longer than the 4 PUP games.
Wish we knew the extent of injury.
July 25th, 2025 at 12:07 pm
Meh, the media (including this site) over re act to every play, injury and coaching choice.
If you have LOW Football IQ you get worried about training camp play with no pads on, against your own teammates
July 25th, 2025 at 12:27 pm
I will be shocked if Wirfs misses any more than 2 games.
That’s another 2 months and wouldn’t mean sooner than later to me.
July 25th, 2025 at 3:05 pm
It’s going to take 3 or 4 practices for the OL to get going. Early in the well, they might be a little off. I don’t expect them to play well until the end of next week.
July 25th, 2025 at 5:01 pm
It’s way too early to get worried. The Bucs have all preseason to find a guy to hold down the fort till Wirfs comes back. Keep your cool the Bucs aren’t getting caught by surprise or regular season with 4 days to prepare. Heck is gonna surprise people, just wait & see. GO BUCS!!!! WE BELIEVE!!!!
July 26th, 2025 at 3:32 am
This is the only reason I do not like shorts and shirts practices. Nobody can really block or tackle. It proves nothing about anyone but DBs, WRs, and getting plays installed. You really can’t even assess QBs much if they are running away from guys trying to impress a coach and nobody is blocking.
I played a bit of this stuff in gym class and we at least had a three Mississippi count. LOL
Go Bucs!
July 26th, 2025 at 11:30 am
El Matadoro is gonna get Baker killed if Jason and Todd don’t make a move to push Porn Stache out of the way.