Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Bucs. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Bucs. This 2020 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Tampa Bay Bucs. Proof that shit really DOES roll downhill.
Your 2019 record: 7-9 and filled with the requisite amount of Tampa Bay fuckery. Jameis Winston threw 30 picks, the most anyone has thrown since 1988 when Vinny Testaverde did it, naturally, for this same team. The Bucs also had a game-winning fumble return for a TD against the Titans blown dead. Carlton Davis tried to forcibly remove Jared Cook’s head from his body, and not in a cool way. Russell Wilson beat them with a touchdown pass in overtime. The bad teams ALWAYS give up that TD in overtime that ends the game on the first possession. Their head coach ordered his team to take a deliberate delay of game penalty on a potential game-winning 34-yard field goal because—and this is true—he told reporters that a longer kick would have been EASIER. Here’s what happened after that unforced self-own:
Leave it to the Bucs to ruin America’s Daniel Jones hate-in. These people made me cheer for the RAIDERS in a Super Bowl once. They can make any enemy a friend. That’s gonna be especially true this season.
Your coach: The aforementioned delay-of-game fetishist Bruce Arians. Say Coach, what do you think about this whole rona business?
“The players, they’re going to all get sick, that’s for sure. It’s just a matter of how sick they get.”
I wanna goof on Arians for this quote, but this is Tampa, man. Players get flesh-eating bacteria in the training room here. This man knows the Bucs almost too well. Let’s see his progress report on new tight end Rob Gronkowski!
“He’s probably in New England shape right now. He’s not in Florida shape. The heat’s kicking his ass pretty good. It’s different, man . . . I don’t think he’s ever sweat that much in his life.”
Rob Gronkowski played at Arizona.
Your quarterback: ROLL THE TAPE.
Who’d have guessed that going from Jameis Winston to Tom Brady would actually be a seamless viewing transition? ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IN FLORIDA’S WORST CITY. With Tom Brady's arrival, manatees are now the second slowest thing in town. You remember when Joe Montana left San Francisco and had a charming little run in Kansas City and he took the Chiefs to the AFC title game? This is gonna be just like that, except without the winning part.
You have to give the Bucs credit for dumping Jameis Winston in favor of someone even more personally unpleasant. Despite ingesting every last HGH tablet and powdered rhino horn on Earth, Tom Brady is no longer capable of making chicken salad out of chicken shit, and it’s debatable if he can make it out of actual chicken at this point, too. OH BUT DON’T WORRY FREE AGENTS ARE EATING THEIR OWN FECES TO COME PLAY WITH THE GOAT.
Untril Leonard Fournette got released by the Jags, literally no other free agents signed with the team after this. Joe Haeg was the Brady Stampede. Tampa is once again being given the northeast's elderly and trying to convince themselves it's progress. But hey, at least the Bucs won’t be talking themselves into a turnover-prone, all-purpose rapist for the sixth year in a row!
This is what Tom Brady deserves. After two decades of racking up titles while simultaneously painting himself as History’s Greatest Victim while in New England, he deserves to unofficially begin his retirement playing in an empty Margaritaville restaurant patio. He deserves to have the world realize he’s a tired old crank the SECOND he starts eating Ls on a regular basis. He deserves to get caught breaking quarantine because he thinks his blood is made of Crystal Light. He deserves to try to make yet another white wideout (the honor goes to the immortal Scotty Miller this time) happen, only to fail. He deserves to live in a city where the denial of reality is the foremost export. Most of all, he deserves to swallow a balloon filled with human shit. There’s a reason Belichick cut Brady lose, but I already know that people in this state can NEVER see a warning sign.
Your backup is Blaine Gabbert. You WILL see him start a game this season. That’s the Gabbert Guarantee.
What’s new that sucks: Gronk is here, which means they can turn the whole team into an Adult Swim cartoon with Arians played by a snapping turtle wearing a Kangol hat and a "Kiss The Cook" barbecue apron. Gronk has not played a full 16-game season since 2011. He also unretired because, like every other athlete alive, he discovered that no one found him interesting anymore once he’d hung up his cleats. So what you’re getting with Gronk: Answer The Call is a barely more tolerable version of Jason Witten playing out the string in Las Vegas. Then Gronk will break both shoulder blades in November and re-retire to host Now The Ceiling Is Lava!
Keep in mind that this was a team that already had too many tight ends, so if you like two NFL legends running delayed handoff out of the jumbo package, you’re in luck. Your new right tackle is hilariously named Tristan Wirfs. Sounds like a character from one of those '90s Miramax comedies where old British people are naked.
Elsewhere, Leonard Fournette has joined the team, which sounds like an upgrade for Fournette right up until Brady checks down to him 60 times a game. Shaq Barrett signed his franchise tender. And the Bucs have new uniforms! WITH ACTUAL NUMERALS THIS TIME!
Brady can dress up in monochrome pewter all he likes. Won’t change the fact that no other team wanted him.
What has always sucked: Lightning strikes Floridians more than the residents of any other state. Again, this is God trying to tell Floridians something, but the only time Floridians hear our Lord is when Ron DeSantis tells them that testing for the rona is for cowards. As for Tampa, it’s Orange County, Calif., only without the halfway decent taste. The only reason people come here is because no one else, not even Orlando, will have them. The Bucs are a strip club floor on a Sunday morning. A collection of money and stale piss. Adding Tom Brady to the proceedings will only cheapen Brady. It already has. It certainly won’t ENHANCE the Bucs’ reputation as the latter-day FSU of the NFL. This is where class goes to die. Brady has already moved into Derek Jeter’s old house, which makes Betsy DeVos’s house look like the paragon of elegance by comparison.
There’s no hiding your ugliness in this city or on this team. It’s all there for everyone to see. The Bucs may as well all their games in trench coats with nothing underneath. This is land of stupid perverts.
What might not suck: Having Brady means everyone is gonna pay attention to the Bucs for a change. Don’t expect that to last.
Ratto says: “Believing that Tampa Bay was Tom Brady's first choice, as opposed to his only one, suggests that Brady's legendary penchant for preparation skipped the day when he was supposed to learn how to navigate ProFootballReference.com. The Bucs have been unencumbered by the burden of January football for 13 years, and their singular moment of glory came when they reached the Super Bowl with a coach who had just finished coaching their opponent and knew everything they were doing -- except of course the part where the other team's starting center had a mental crisis and bolted the team during game week. It was a scrimmage with jewelry and a parade at the end.
“Since that moment seventeen years ago, their winning percentage is four points better than that of the Staten Island Stapletons. And Brady wanted this? This is a long-standing bag of bubbling catsick trying to steal a championship as if it were Manchester United (the Glazers' real sports holding) trying to win the Champions League by signing Eric Cantona. The only reason to want them to win is to make Bill Belichick miserable, and even that is a false dichotomy because Belichick doesn't feel misery, he distributes it. This is the Arizona Coyotes trying to win the Stanley Cup.”
HEAR IT FROM BUCS FANS!
Richard:
Fuck me in the ass with a hot pressed cuban sandwich.
Brian:
Over the past five years, Jason Licht has drafted 10 defensive backs in the first four rounds and has had a monumentally bad secondary every year.
JA:
Our previous claim to fame was shitty creamsicle uniforms and Jameis Winston trying to eat his own hand. The Bucs are a lost cause and I curse the day I found a single Bucs t-shirt hanging in a store that was going out of business and decided, "yeah, this will be my team".
Mike:
Sure we have Gronk and Brady, but at this stage in their careers that’s like winning a Cadillac in a contest only to find out that you won an 83’ Cimarron. I trust this team as much as I would trust election results from Belarus.
Vlad:
Excited to have a quarterback who might throw more touchdowns than interceptions, but terrified by the knowledge that in six years, Tom Brady will be elected governor of Florida and replace Medicaid with the TB12™ hydration-based wellness system.
Taylor:
If someone offered me a chance to go back to quietly being the one of the worst teams in NFL history instead of being saddled with all the expectations and embarrassment of Boston sports fans, I'd take it.
Tom Brady and his quack doctor are a perfect fit for Florida. I hope all the avocado that Tom is rubbing on his lungs keeps him safe enough from COVID to disappoint us on the field this year.
Jon (from Norway):
I'm a European Bucs fan, and the great thing about their suckiness was that they would never get any primetime games, always 7pm central Euro time (1pm Eastern). So I could watch them fuck up with 2nd round kickers and defences that never stopped a thing, and then head to bed at 10.30 like a normal human being. Now the incompetent GM added some has-beens from the fucking Patriots, which surely will mean tons of US primetime games. So now I have to stay up till 5pm on a regular basis to watch them lose. Fuck the Bucs, they suck and will never not suck.
Marcelo:
What is worse: being irrelevant, or counting on a proven cheater and white supremacist apologist to make your team relevant? What if we win with this tacky showdog as the quarterback?
Rob Gronkowski must be the least funny person on the face of the earth and his complete lack of awareness and his unwarranted confidence make him think the exact opposite. I hope he fails miserably and Tom Brady gets benched in favor of Blaine Gabbert.
Here in Brazil, the NFL's expansion and success coincided with the Patriots dynasty. Because cable is not cheap here, most if not all NFL fans are white middle class racist assholes who love trashing their own country and are only proud of anything Brazilian if they have a white European face and surname to it. They also get highly offended when Brady is referred to over here as Gisele's husband by most people.
So, the vast majority of Brazilian NFL fans are Patriots fans and now all these assholes also like the Bucs, which is immeasurably worse than being the sole Bucs fan in the US.
Fuck TOMPA and all other obvious jokes and puns brands cannot avoid making.
Paul:
Brady is a 40-something QB who had been let go by a team in the Patriots that has a notoriously shrewd history of cutting and trading veterans at the precise moment they're about to fall apart. The Bucs had equally pressing problems with a leaky secondary on their defense that still does not look resolved.
One of the other problems being a Bucs fan is how there's a sizable group of the fanbase who still think the Bucs gave up on Jameis Winston too soon, even after five fucking seasons of watching him generate more turnovers than touchdowns, and having a decent game one week and crappy games the next three. The word unreliable should matter here, and yet there's Jameis fans on Twitter and the social media sites declaring Jameis is a GOAT instead of Brady. /headdesk
Brandon:
I'm a Canadian who, inexplicably, is a long time Bucs fan. The Bucs have been surprisingly not terrible at collecting competent coaches and players who are fun to cheer for. Arians seems like a good guy. Licht jumps in his pool in a full suit after every win. I would let Mike Evans babysit my kids. Ali Marpet is a giant man who plays the ukelele. All these guys are fun to root for and seem like decent people.
So why haven't the scrappy Bucs become media darlings over the last few years? Because of Jameis Fucking Winston. But lo! This offseason the Bucs actually jettisoned him! So this spring I was thinking that, finally, the Bucs would sign a likeable QB (preferably one that likes throwing to guys wearing his uniform colour) and the Bucs would be, if not successful, at least loveable. Bridgewater was available! Imagine Teddy dancing in the endzone with Evans and Godwin after a TD. That would be great!
So what do the Bucs do? They sign the NFL's preeminent MAGA chud. Tom Fucking Brady. An intensely unlikeable robot who makes most of his money from a kale-based Ponzi scheme. He has even become more unlikeable since joining the Bucs by turning into a Flat Bill Dad who posts boomer memes on Instagram. I can't believe this fucking team. Even when they do something right, they do it wrong. So I guess I'll be spending this season rooting for an emotionless Vanilla Ice clone to turn my team around.
Maybe Brady will be a huge success. Maybe he will lead the Bucs to a Super Bowl victory. But when he hoists the Lombardi Trophy, just know that I'll be thinking of my one true love: Brad Johnson.
Submissions for the NFL previews are closed. Next up: Denver Broncos.
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