New ownership, new season, new expectations?
A brief look at the beginning of the 2018 Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ season.
Welcome back NFL fans. The Tampa Bay Gazette is here to bring you all your Tampa Bay Buccaneers news and this year feels like it could be an exciting year. With new ownership come new expectations. We’re hopeful that we can get more access and face time with players and coaches compared to what we got with the Glazer family.
This first week of training camp and practice has brought some surprises and some familiar sights. There were no surprises in the depth chart outside of Adam Humphries maintaining his 3rd WR spot over Chris Godwin, but all other positions well into place as you would expect.
The systems being run are a bit different than you would expect compared to what Head Coach Dirk Koetter typically runs. This year will see a Vertical Power Run offense with the hopes of shortening games and using play action to go deep. The Bucs offense has a chance to be good but it all depends on how Jameis Winston fares in his 4th season.
On defense, the Bucs will be running the Base 4-3. When asked why they refuse to go back to the Tampa 2, the only comment we got was this from Koetter, “That’s what I want, I’m the coach.” Sounds like there is already friction there with Koetter trying to asset himself through the media.
We tried to sneak into a few of the closed session practices, but were quickly asked to leave. That didn’t stop us though, as we managed to speak to a few players and coaches off the record. The players seem pleased with the changes being made but were a bit worried about their jobs. The coaches couldn’t offer anything, seeming to be afraid that whatever they said may come back to bite them.
We tried to catch a few minutes with the new owner, but as you might expect, he’s a busy guy. We did catch him walking down the hallway in One Buc Place, and while he waved us off, he did say he was excited about the season and wouldn’t be afraid to put his stamp on the team. He also mentioned he’d give us a few brief sound bites prior to the first game.
What will it bring? Who knows, but this could be a very exciting season on and off the field.