Top 30 Buccaneers Mysteries Of 2014 — No. 15

February 22nd, 2015

In many ways, Tampa Bay’s 2014 season was more bizarre than the MRSA-infected, quarterback-gone-mental, Fire-Schiano-billboards campaign of 2013.

There were plenty of real Bucs mysteries last year, and Joe’s revisiting the most interesting of the bunch.

No. 15 — No Help Wanted

Give Joe enough beer and you might hear a good argument for Lovie Smith failing to hire another offensive mind as being the No. 1 mystery of last year.

Why, why, why did Lovie not hire an experienced set of eyes to come in and help Marcus Arroyo? Heck, Lovie believed wholeheartedly that the Bucs were in the hunt to win the NFC South.

The artist, former offensive coordinator Jeff Tedford, went down sick in late August and the Bucs turned the ball over to ill-equipped, inexperienced former quarterbacks coach Arroyo, who didn’t have the benefit of an offensive-minded head coach, or another offensive coach with significant coordinator experience.

In the aftermath of the season, Josh McCown has been quick to throw blame at Arroyo’s inexperience, and general manager Jason Licht is finally feeling “relief.” (Funny how everything was fine in Weeks 4 and 5.)

Hiring a veteran offensive consultant sure would have made sense. In the fall, Joe listened to plenty of interviews with retired former Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. Joe would be shocked if Gilbride wouldn’t have been interested in at least coming in for a few weeks to help Lovie and Arroyo stabilize the Bucs’ offense. Other quality names home on the couch, too.

Maybe Lovie is a Grade A fox and was angling to win the Chase for Jameis all along?

No. 16 — Sticky Spot
No. 17 — Virgin center
No. 18 — Investing in seven starts
No. 19 — Returner decisions
No. 20 — VJax’s wrist
No. 21 — Anti-Jell
No. 22 — Seferian-Jenkins boasting about penalized pose
No. 23 — Never moving Michael Johnson
No. 24 — “I didn’t want to put more points on the board”
No. 25 — Glennon success without an offensive coordinator
No. 26 — Putrid punting
No. 27 — Defending three-step drops
No. 28 — Eight consecutive red zone runs versus Rams
No. 29 — Leaky Sean Glennon
No. 30 – Jorvorskie Lane

10 Responses to “Top 30 Buccaneers Mysteries Of 2014 — No. 15”

  1. WS99 Says:

    Water under the bridge at this point brother.

  2. knuckledragger Says:

    Maybe Lovie is a Grade A fox and was angling to win the Chase for Jameis all along?”
    Just Wow!

  3. tmaxcon Says:

    Lovie fully understands Jameis Winston is the only hope for him to save his job. Lovie needs Jameis far more than Jameis needs a mediocre head coach who is getting a free pass for losing the superbowl almost ten years ago.

  4. LargoBuc Says:

    I would ass-ume that any decent offensive minds would either be unavailable or unwilling to come to the Bucs in any cspacity for any length of time. But the writers on this site hsve grade A sources so perhaps the Bucs did have some options. If that is the case, putting Arroyo in that situation is irresponsible. Then they fire the guy afterwards? Seems like Arroyo was the scapegoat for this joke of a season. If we had a good qb then I would guess that qb would be able to take some plays out of the playbook and call his own plays on a drive. But no. We had turnover Mccown and an inconcistent Glennon so mix all that with a half ass oline and you get the spit show that was our Bucs.
    And Mccown has blamed his joke of a season on the lack of an ocoordinator. I get its not an easy situation at all. But it wasnt Arroyo fumbling and throwing interceptions all game.

  5. soflobiuc Says:

    Then they would have won games, they were gunning for the first pick all along, its the only explanation!!

  6. ddneast Says:

    Wish McClown would have spoken up sooner. Midway through the season he was saying on his radio show what a great, hard working guy Arroyo was.
    Called in a radio show and asked the same thing to about bringing an OC to the host I feel is very impartial and he told me that bringing someone else in would have been near impossible to do. I wrote the Bucs asking the same question after the Ravens game and got the same answer. Oh well.
    Don’t feel to bad for Arroyo. His contract was for two years so he gets paid for a funk year while he looks for a job.
    Besides, the guy was a friend of Tedford’s which is why he got the job. He really didn’t have the qualifications to be an NFL QB coach.

  7. ddneast Says:

    Nice to read a story that isn’t full of pro Winston propaganda.

  8. Brandon Says:

    Gilbride was still getting paid by the Giants… we couldn’t have paid him enough to take on somebody else’s mess.

  9. Harry Says:

    This was #1 in my opinion. Totally bizarre.

  10. Curse of Gruden Says:

    This is only #15? Meaning there are 14 more memories worse the this that will be unearthed. You’re killing me Joe.