Bucky Irving Is A Go
November 29th, 2025
Green light for Sunday
Earlier this week, Bucs offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard cautioned that if Bucs running back Bucky Irving plays on Sunday against the Cardinals, it is unreasonable to expect him to play 60 snaps.
Grizzard has said this before about players returning to the field who have missed a few games due to injury.
OK, Bucky won’t get 60 snaps. So how many touches will he get? Bucs coach Todd Bowles said Bucky will tell the Bucs how many carries he gets.
“We’ll put him in,” Bowles said. “Once he gets in, we’ll see how he is rolling, and then between him, Rachaad [White] and Sean [Tucker], we’ll kind of go with the hot hand.”
Joe suspects with Baker Mayfield likely not 100 percent, the Bucs are going to go ground and pound. The only time since beat San Francisco, the Bucs looked halfway decent on offense was when they went run-heavy.
Arizona’s defense is middle of the pack both against the run and against the pass.
November 29th, 2025 at 1:05 am
I’d sure hope to God by now!
November 29th, 2025 at 1:14 am
The way bowles insinuates that White is still RB2 is so frustrating.
November 29th, 2025 at 3:56 am
Todd Bowles … ‘“We’ll put him (Bucky) in. Once he gets in, we’ll see how he is rolling, and then between him, Rachaad [White] and Sean [Tucker], we’ll kind of go with the hot hand.”
Something about that statement gave me the feeling that neither Todd nor Grizz has a really good feel for the Bucs’ Run Game. Looked back to the first 4 games that Bucky, Rachaad & Sean played in and I think I know why. Look at how many offensive snaps each of our RBs got in those 4 games:
o Bucky: 198 total (44-57-53-44) – 71 runs – 3.3 YPC
o White: 89 total (14-25-20-30) – 23 runs – 4.7 YPC
o Tucker: 3 total (2-1-0-0) – 1 run – 2.0 YPC
Bucs got over 100 yds rushing in each 1 of those 4 games, but it wasn’t rushing that won those first 3 games; it was Baker’s PASSING in the last drives that won each of them.
For his part, Bucky got the lion’s share of carries AND snaps, but his 3.3 YPC average is anything but impressive. Hardly what I would call ‘having the hot hand’.
It doesn’t appear like Grizz has nearly the ‘feel’ for the Run Game that Coen had. The fact that our combined YPC average this season is down to 4.2 YPC (from last year’s 5.3 YPC) kinda verifies that. We’ve got 3 very good RBs, each with kind of a different skillset. With our Passing Game sputtering, Grizz needs to find ways to better optimize use of all 3 of those RBs.