Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This 2024 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Your 2023 record: 9-8. Has any team ever collected as many unearned and unwanted wins as the 2023 Tampa Bay Buccaneers? The plan heading into last season was simple: Spend the first year of the post-Brady era with a roster happily hamstrung by a dead cap figure equal to an island nation's GDP, lose a whole bunch of games on purpose, and then enter 2024 with Caleb Williams and money to spend in free agency. You morons. You fools. You blew it!
The big mistake the Bucs' front office made last season was in assuming that a team quarterbacked by a guy who was too pitiful for the Browns and coached by a guy with the charisma of an IRS auditor would automatically be bad enough to secure a high draft pick. General Manager Jason Licht must have been rubbing his greasy hands together before Week 1, anticipating Todd Bowles's midseason firing and the quarterback carousel kicking into high gear by Week 7. What Licht failed to account for is the fact that the NFC South is the NFL's hospice wing. Losing games in that division requires real effort, like lacing the cafeteria food with strychnine, or letting David Tepper make important decisions.
And so the Bucs ended up in the damn playoffs, where they even managed to win a game thanks to drawing a matchup with the NFC East's NFC Southiest team, the Philadelphia Eagles. And then they almost beat the Lions in the divisional round. Christ, could this team have fucked up any worse?
Your coach: Todd Bowles, who is entering his third season as a lame duck. I admire what Bowles is doing in Tampa. He was tasked with presiding over a lifeless and forgettable 2022 season while Brady finished his transformation into Divorced Skeletor, and he might as well have walked into 2023 with a sacrificial dagger already halfway into his chest. The Bucs are just waiting for this guy to turn in a four-win season so that they can replace him with Sean McVay's 12-year-old nephew, but Bowles has yet to give in. I hope he spends the next six years winning nine games and advancing to the second round, and then retires to spend the rest of his days watching a bunch of quarterbacks who the Bucs couldn't draft win multiple Super Bowls.
Your quarterback: Baker Mayfield, who had the best season of his professional career in 2023 [crowd cheers], led the Bucs to the second round of the playoffs [crowd goes wild], is now the franchise quarterback [crowd murmurs nervously], and just signed a three-year deal with an AAV of $33 million [crowd gasps in horror]. Remember all that cap room that the Bucs were supposed to have this season to build a roster around whatever stud quarterback they ended up drafting? It all got shotgunned into Mayfield's ever-expanding beer gut.
Mayfield's numbers from 2023 will tell you that he was genuinely good and deserving of the contract the Bucs gave him, but your brain will tell you otherwise. Mayfield started all 17 games, threw for over 4,000 yards and 28 touchdowns, and somehow only threw 10 picks. The league is littered with teams who would kill for a quarterback capable of putting up those numbers, but do you really trust Mayfield to do that again? Do you trust any of the Bucs to reproduce the seasons they had last year, which exceeded everyone's expectations and still only got them nine wins in the worst division in football?
Mayfield and the Bucs offense were shockingly good on third downs last season, which sounds like a good thing only to people who didn't actually watch their games. Every one of Tampa Bay's drives started with two white-flag running plays that would gain a total of 3.5 yards, and then on third down Mayfield would scurry around for a bit before throwing a jump ball to a completely covered Mike Evans, who would find a way to haul it in for a gain of 12. This is not how functional offenses move the ball down the field, but it's what the Bucs are stuck with after deciding to invest in Mayfield. They got tricked. Instead of initiating an actual rebuild, the front office got charmed by a nine-win season and is now stuck with a team that's absolute ceiling is being the fattest hog in the slaughterhouse. Anyone who draws the Bucs in the playoffs the next few years will essentially be getting a bye week.
What's new that sucks: Perhaps sensing that the Ah, just toss it to Evans, he'll figure it out offense is likely to grow stale in Year 2 of the Mayfield era, the Bucs brought in Liam Coen to be the team's new offensive coordinator. Is he a doofy-looking white guy in his 30s who coached under Sean McVay? Of course he is. This message is for Todd Bowles: Your life is in danger. If at any point Liam asks you to join him on a boat trip to the middle of the ocean so that the two of you can "really lock in" and "get synced up" and "grind out some offensive concepts," get to a safe location and call the police.
Coen is tasked with tossing out last season's baby-brained offense and replacing it with all sorts of cool, modern concepts that will in theory push Mayfield to another level. The thing is, you don't want Mayfield anywhere near an offensive scheme that can be described as "innovative" or "complex" or "created by an adult." Ask this bozo to call a play with more than seven words in it and his vision starts to go blurry. Halfway through the first game of the season Mayfield's going to come to the sideline after a delay-of-game penalty and ask Coen if he wants him to "do the long throw or the short throw" while Bowles continues staring into the middle distance.
The Bucs were one of the worst teams in the league at pressuring the quarterback last season, and they are going into this season without Shaq Barrett and Devin White. Even Bryce Young might manage to throw for 350 yards against this team.
What has always sucked: So much of what's enjoyable about football can be found in its pageantry and nostalgia. Put a snowy game between the Vikings and Packers on my TV, and I will say, "This is what it's all about, folks," as I lie on the couch. Every humiliating Cowboys loss feels like a visit from an old friend. I get genuinely excited to watch the Lions play on Thanksgiving. Get four Labatt Blues in me and I'll start making the argument that the Bills have a truly unique and special connection to the city of Buffalo, and that football there is just different, man.
The Bucs undermine all of this. This is a tacky, two-bit organization that offers a version of football stripped of any social or aesthetic value. Every time the Bucs are on my TV, I feel bad about what I am seeing. What joy is there to be found in watching hideously uniformed players grind out games for this forever-forgettable franchise while thousands of disinterested fans suffer from heat exhaustion in one of America's most charmless stadiums? Who is supposed to be thrilled by this? Watching the Bucs is like staring directly into a fluorescent light while hungover.
What might not suck: Vita Vea, Antoine Winfield Jr., and Lavonte David form the spine of what could be a formidable defense; Evans and Chris Godwin are about as good of a receiver pairing as anyone could ask for. Too bad Mayfield is going to get them killed.
HEAR IT FROM THE FANS!
Joe:
Living overseas I encounter a lot of people while wearing my Bucs gear. A few times a year I have the following experience. Someone asks me if I'm a Bucs fan. (Because you know a lot of people like to wear cremcicle pirate gear and/or red pirate gear that looks like the knockoff Raiders logo, so they need to make sure I'm actually a true Bucs fan). After I tell them I'm a fan their is always this long period of silence. Finally, they say, "I'm from Florida and I don't know a single Bucs fan". Apparently, you're more likely to run into the endangered Florida panther than a Bucs fan in Florida.
Tony:
Their franchise QB is a better commercial actor than he is a QB.
Their uniform colors perfectly complement all the fans’ MAGA hats.
I’m pretty sure they fired Todd Bowles at the end of the last two seasons, but somehow, he’s still here.
Speaking of MAGA, they gave Tom Brady his last Super Bowl.
Vladimir:
I'm excited about Baker Mayfield. That sucks. He's Baker Mayfield! But not counting Brady, he is the best quarterback I've seen in 30+ years of watching this team. That really sucks.
Ladanian:
I've been trying to get my kids into the team. Apparently Mr. Beast the Youtube guy went and hung out with them for some reason. So I have been calling them the pirate team thinking they would think this is cool. So the other day my son very excitedly was looking at the Tv and said "Hey Dad Look! It's the pirate team". I was excited to start creating those bonds with my boy. Unfortunately when I looked up I noticed he was pointing at the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I like wearing my Bucs polos to work. I just assumed everyone would know I like a pirate themed American football team.
Turns out I'm mostly just known as the guy who likes pirates too much.
On a positive note sometimes to end conversations I say "Go Bucs", or "Fire those Cannons" or "Seige the Day!"
This is always met with confused silence. Whatever, we're winning that putrid division no matter what. Go Bucs!
Hugh:
Egg sucking Bucs. That's how my dad, a die hard Dolphins fan, referred to them.
Start 0-26? Egg sucking Bucs.
Doug Williams leaves over a measly 100K in salary? Egg sucking Bucs.
Nearly two straight decades of losing seasons? Egg sucking Bucs.
The most painful thing was it annoyed the shit out of my mother (a Bucs die hard, yes we exist), yet he kept saying it. Just to needle her. Somehow, it felt nastier than if he had said something truly profane.
It wasn't the reason they divorced, but it didn't help.
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