 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Joe’s as bitter, embarrassed and exasperated as the next fan, but at least there was one bright spot today to soothe you before you leap from the Skyway Bridge.
Da’Quan Bowers played pretty darn well . And Joe’s sure he’s not reaching here, though Joe must watch the game again.
Bowers was active in the backfield, made sure tackles and batted down a pass.
At least it’s something after an historic beating.
NFL experts are quick to tell Joe there is no such thing as a fluke in the NFL.
But the way Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman has played in the first five games of the season, it makes one wonder if only throwing six picks for an entire year like Freeman did last year in his first full year as a starter was indeed a fluke.
Freeman has yet to have a spectacular game this year. The debacle on the left coast today was easily his worst of the season and perhaps worst of his career.
Freeman didn’t just throw interceptions, he forced passes into double- if not triple-coverage, telegraphing passes.
Moose and Goose on the Fox broadcast believed Freeman should have had more interceptions.
Look, Joe loves Freeman and last year showed how good Freeman can be. What is not known is whether Freeman, in frustration, is forcing passes, putting too much pressure on himself or if he has regressed?
Or, was 2010 a fluke?
"Don't worry, little man, I'll snap out of it."
The last time the Bucs were completely wiped out goes back an entire year — minus a week — to the 31-6 beating at the hands of the Saints in Tampa.
The Saints, now 4-1 atop the NFC South, roll into Tampa next Sunday for a 4:15 p.m start.
Good seats, great seats and bad seats are available.
In case you watched this ugly alley-beating of a game to the bitter end, you witnessed the worst beatdown in Bucs history.
Well, at least tied for the worst beatdown.
Losing 48-3 to Alex Smith and the 49ers tied the worst loss in Bucs history. The other ugly loss came against the Raiders in 1999 when the Bucs were shut out 44-0.
The difference in this game and the last time the Bucs were chain-whipped like this? This team does not have Warren Sapp. This team does not have Derrick Brooks. This team does not have John Lynch.
How good of a leader is Josh Freeman or Gerald McCoy? We’ll find out in a week when the Bucs host the NFC South-leading New Orleans Saints.
Hurry up. Good tickets are available.
The Bucs got outhustled, outcoached, outmuscled, outplayed and outeverythinged today in San Francisco, crushed in all phases of the game. Another slow start but this time without the rousing finish.
It was putrid — Raheem Morris might call it “Yugly” — and really was the kind of performance that forces fans to doubt whether the Bucs are a playoff team. Even Raheem joined the stupid-penalty dance with a personal foul for chewing a referee’s ear off on the sideline. (Nice punt catch, Myron Lewis.)
It’s one thing for a team to completely fall apart mentally when a game’s out of reach in the fourth quarter, but the Bucs completely lost it early in the third quarter.
Joe’s not surprised the defense fell off noticably when Gerald McCoy went down with a heinous-looking injury, but their problems on defense went way deeper than that.
Most scary, perhaps, was Josh Freeman flashing back to 2009. And the playcalling is a big ol’ headscratcher for Joe.
As always, Joe will have all kinds of takes out of this game. Keep coming back through the night.
So the Bucs return to the left coast to face the 49ers, both with 3-1 records. Have at it boys and girls. Now behave. 🙂
Week 5
Bucs at 49ers
Kickoff: 4:05 p.m.
TV: WTVT Channel 13 in the Tampa Bay area, DirecTV 7112.
Radio: Buccaneers Radio Network (in Tampa WFUS-FM, 103.5 and WDAE-AM, 620); Sirius Channel 136.
Weather: Per Accuweather.com, chilly by Florida standards but great for football players. Temperature at kickoff is expected to be 65 under sunny skies. The temperature should remain steady through the game.
Odds: Per SportsBook.com, Bucs +3.
Outlook: Biggest game of the year for the Bucs. They actually have a shot of beating one of the surprise teams of the NFL this season that has some talent. But beating the Niners isn’t exactly rocket science. Though quarterback Alex Smith is playing better, he’s still Alex Smith. Take away Frank Gore and you are now putting the game in the small hands of Smith. If the Bucs can continue their strong defensive line play, and Smith has to win the game, where is your money going? This isn’t rocket science. It simply comes down to stopping the run. With the ball, the Bucs may be facing the best defense so far this year, at least up front. If Blount gets 100 yards, Joe will lay cash the Bucs win. Easier said than done. Could this be the game that Josh Freeman blows up for the first time this season?
If the Bucs had a former seventh-round pick known for his brute strength making his first start today, there would be loads of Bucs fans giddy about what could be the next Mark Dominik gem-in-waiting seizing his shot.
Instead, though, it’s the 49ers with a manbeast nobody at nosetackle, Ricky Jean Francois, aka Freaky Jean, up against the well-paid veterans on the Bucs offensive line. So feel free to point fingers and believe Freaky Jean is a massive liability that is about to get a rude awakening.
Joe hopes this is the case, but who knows with an athletic third-year guy salivating for a chance? You can read more about Francois in a feature today in the Sacramento Bee, which leads us to believe Francois is a reformed partier.
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of holes open around this guy.
If so, this truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from Joe’s friends at Ed Morse Cadillac Tampa and Ed Morse Cadillac Brandon. Click the image below for registration information.
Joe sincerely hopes the lack of a sellout for the Bucs-Bears game in England later this month ends the stupidity of the NFL making teams head over to soccerland to play a real game.
What does it say that a once-a-year event can’t sell out? It says the market there sucks for football.
The dude in England that runs BucPower.com and the small Bucs fan club there — the Bucs slobber over this guy ridiculously — penned a story about the non-sellout recently. Joe figures if the guy knows anything, it’s about that game.
(Q. Why so hostile towards the England fan, Joe? A. Well, this guy wrote Joe a nasty hate note two years ago out of the blue, telling Joe he heard him on a radio interview spitting out an incorrect statistic about Luke McCown and Joe should be ashamed of himself and that Joe would never be a “serious commentator” if he continued to spread BS. Little did the guy know that the stat was accurate. Mr. Buc Power had assumed Joe was talking about regular season versus preseason. Joe wrote back and got no response.)
It should be clear that England has no business getting an NFL franchise, and all the NFL is doing is messing with the league schedule and making an insignificant amount of bucks out there.
Here’s an idea: If the NFL wants to market in Europe, perhaps they could just run a big contest and fly in 1,000 fans a week from England to fill seats in Tampa, Jacksonville, or Miami, or whereever else. Surely that would get massive attention, and the tourist bureaus and other companies wouldn’t mind kicking in for such an effort.
The vaunted Peter King and ProFootballTalk.com guru Mike Florio break down their allegedly five must-see games in the NFL this weekend. At about 3:45 of the video, they take on the Bucs-49ers. Surprisingly, there’s no love here for the Niners.
Breaking sports news video. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL highlights and more.
Veteran Tampa Bay sportscaster Dave Wirth, of WTSP Ch. 10, reminds us what’s going well and what’s not going so well for the Bucs, complete with a Godfather II reference in this exclusive video for JoeBucsFan readers.
Sabby the Goat showed plenty of emotion when he played for the Bucs.
Joe admits he has a disconnect with some fans. Joe doesn’t do fantasy football and when he owned season tickets he rarely stood up during games. Why? If Joe stood up, did that mean there was a less of a chance Kenyatta Walker would hold a defensive player?
A fan recently wrote in to TBO.com’s Bucs Question-and-Answer feature wanting to know why players don’t dance through opponents’ warm-ups (an illegal act now by the way) and do all sorts of other nonsense to make it look like they are badasses.
Woody Cummings of the Tampa Tribune believed the Bucs do possess enough of an attitude.
Q: I have been to every home game so far this season, and I continue to notice a lack of attitude/anger in the Bucs players. It seems like they are more interested in shaking hands and smiling rather than taking the heads off the other team. I used to watch Sapp come out of the locker room and skip across the other teams practice just to let them know he was there. This type of attitude is what I feel needs to get back in Tampa. Do you think this is more of a coaching issue, or the individual players just lacking that type of attitude?
Tony Ulrich, Jr., Riverview
A: I don’t think it’s an issue at all. The line coaches on both sides of the ball are definitely encouraging their players to play with a mean streak. In fact, it’s demanded of them. And coach Raheem Morris has gone so far as to ask his players to be “violent” and to play a “border-line illegal” brand of football. As far as the results go, there was little question the Bucs played mean on the defensive side of the ball. And I’d say their 3-1 record is an indication that their approach, whatever it may be, is working.
– Roy Cummings
Joe believes all this is BS. When was the last time anyone saw Ronde Barber jump around like a banshee? He’s as professional as they get and should be a Hall of Famer.
Joe will end this discussion with one last example. In recent years, no Bucs player jumped around and showed emotion more than Sabby the Goat.
Yeah, it looks cool. But Joe’s more into results, not schtick.
Derek “Old School” Fournier of WhatTheBuc.net describes the challenge it will be for the Bucs to handle the 49ers’ defensive front seven.
It was sad for Joe to learn that Mr. Raider himself, Al Davis, passed.
He was in declining health for some time. When the Bucs played the Raiders in the Super Bowl in January 2003, Davis, walking out of his airplane, barely made it down the stairs. He had to walk backwards. There have been some photos of Davis using a walker in recent years.
Without trying to be crass, maybe fate today was better than suffering?
When Joe grew up, the Raiders, to use a phrase from former Raiders announcer Bill King, were “kings of the world.” Sort of.
The Raiders always seemed to be on TV for the late-afternoon games. Of course, they were on Monday Night Football a lot.
Davis was the only man in NFL history who was a scout, an assistant coach, a coordinator, a head coach, a general manager,, an owner and a commissioner (he was the last commissioner of the American Football League).
Davis built a team that was fun as hell to watch. Quick, long throws downfield, and on defense, his band of bloodthirsty misfits turned each game into a street alley brawl. If the old Raiders played today under Roger Goodell’s touch football rules, half of Davis’ defenders would be thrown out of the league.
(Joe was a kid in grade school and in American History, a particular nun was infatuated with the original California missions and we had to recite them from memory. When reciting the original California missions, Joe always said Oakland, mainly because of the Raiders and partly to hack off the nun, which it did, visibly so. Of course, Oakland is not a correct answer.)
But as much as Davis meant to football and the NFL, Davis played a big part in Bucs history. It was Davis who some say fleeced Team Glazer for first and second round draft picks in 2002, a first round pick in 2003 and a second round pick in 2004, plus cash.
In return the Bucs got Chucky. And what happened? Chucky got the Bucs over the hump and won a Super Bowl. Yeah, without those picks, it partly led to the Bucs dropping off the face of the map. But that is easy to swallow when you have a Super Bowl pelt on the wall.
Joe will never forget the press conference Davis had after that transaction. Davis claimed Joel Glazer called him in the middle of the night to offer a trade and Davis snapped at him saying, “I’m not talking to you. I will only talk to Rich McKay.” Davis claimed that Glazer informed him that he had fired McKay (which wasn’t accurate) and Davis and Glazer then talked turkey that led the Bucs to acquire Chucky.
Did Glazer do a deal with the devil? Perhaps. But it got the Bucs the Vince Lombardi trophy.
As Davis himself would say, “Just win baby.”
Jason Horowitz and Pat Kirwan of CBSSports.com peel the onion skins off the Bucs-49ers game.
Now coaching defensive linemen at USF, former Bucs defensive tackle Chris Hovan likes what he sees on the Bucs’ defensive line. Not known to gush over his ex-mates, Hovan didn’t hold back Friday.
Speaking on The Dan Sileo Show on WDAE-AM 620, Hovan seemed most impressed by Brian Price. “Everytime he’s in, he’s creating a new line of scrimmage,” Hovan said.
Hovan also wants to see the Bucs use two 3-techniques more often to rush the quarterback. “We used to call it the green package because it was the money package. That’s how you got sacks,” Hovan said, explaining that sacks were always part of contract incentives.
Now rushing two 3-technique tackles creates a far different dimension than what the Bucs often do bringing up Dakoda Watson to rush outside or having Michael Bennett inside, for example, essentially forcing Gerald McCoy to be double-teamed.
It’s a point former Bucs defensive end Steve White brought up recently on radio, explaining that the old school Bucs used the double 3-technique effectively, often using Tayoka Jackson in that role. Essentially, that rush would free up McCoy more, which is what the Bucs should want.
Hovan praised McCoy, but said he wants to see a lot more consistency from him.
Oh, and Hovan also said he sees Josh Freeman as a league MVP in two years.
Joe has made it abundantly clear that he’s turned off by the numbers crowd when it comes to sports. They have done their best to ruin Joe’s enjoyment of baseball and thus far, fortunately, they have been unable to infest football.
Why does Joe hate the numbers crowd? Part of it has to do with nuns and rulers which Joe doesn’t want to get into right now. Part of it is something Joe learned in high school that someone can take numbers and statistics and twist them in such a manner that they could “prove” Hitler is in the White House Hank Williams, Jr. is a tolerant soul of a political analyst.
So it was with a bit of enjoyment that Joe heard a numbers guy call “The Opening Drive” yesterday morning with co-hosts Bob Papa and Ross Tucker, heard exclusively on SiriusXM NFL Radio. Audibly shaken in his belief that the Bucs have abandoned the deep pass, and armed with an array of statistics, this caller wanted to know if it’s the defenses the Bucs have faced that have taken away the long pass, or if Bucs offensive coordinator Greg Olson abandoned such plays.
Tucker, in short, wasn’t buying what the stat guy was selling.
“First, coaches don’t look at the game like you do. They look at each game as its own entity, like it’s own version of a little season. Second, if Arrelious Benn doesn’t step out of bounds Monday night, that skewers all of your numbers.
“Then you have to look at the defenses the Bucs played. Minnesota and Indianapolis play almost exclusively Tampa-2. Those teams shut off the long pass and give up the short passes. That’s why you saw the Bucs dump passes over the middle to Earnest Graham Monday night. Those plays were there all night.”
Tucker went on to say that the reasons the Bucs haven’t thrown much downfield is a combination of factors, including how Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman hasn’t been completely accurate in some games, how defenses have shut off the long pass for the most part, and how defenses are determined to lock up Mike Williams, thereby taking away the Bucs’ best deep threat.
Back for his weekly trip to the end zone of the NFL universe, popular sports radio personality Adam Schein travels through football space and time outs. Check out what Schein has to say about the Bucs this week. Consider yourself sucked in to the latest episode of Cosmic Schein!
The latest injury/practice report below from NFL.com shows a pile of banged up Bucs. And, per a 10 a.m. Twittering from Anwar Richardson of The Tampa Tribune, Quincy Black remains off the practice field today.
Quincy Black LB Ankle Did Not Participate
Zach Diles LB Hamstring DNP
Devin Holland S Back DNP
James Lee T Knee DNP
Luke Stocker TE Knee DNP
Sammie Stroughter WR Foot DNP
Aqib Talib CB Knee DNP
Earnest Graham RB Hamstring Limited Participation in Practice
For Joe, the loss of Stocker is significant in the running game. During his news conference yesterday, Raheem Morris mentioned Kellen Winslow possibly being called upon to take a bigger role. That’s not necessarily a good thing.
Also, per Anthony Gaitor’s Twitter account, look for him to get a helmet on for the first time. Joe assumes that would be in place of Devin Holland.
And finally, Earnest Graham’s hamstring injury is troublesome. Oft-injured old guy + bad hammy by Week 5 = a season-long issue.
