I made no bones on this website about my worries of taking an unpolished junior Quarterback who performed awfully against all the good competition he faced in college.  I wasn’t sold before the draft, and after attending practices, attending one preseason game, and watching another two on TV, I’m still not sold on Josh Freeman.  My question though, is if the coaching staff is “married” to him as they say, and he truly represents the future face of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization, how are fans truly supposed to get excited about the naming of Byron Leftwich as the QB.
When [...]

Once again, I was comletely unimpressed with the QB play vs the Miami Dolphins.  Byron Leftwich, while obviously possessing a great arm as far as velocity is concerned, still shows a tendency to sail balls over receivers heads.  He was 9/17 for 100 yards, and his preseason completion % is still under 50%. Luke McCown was equally unimpressive going 5/11 for 38 yards.  He doesn’t seem to have the ability to feel pressure, and was sacked multiple times.  I will in McCowns defense, that the offensive line did not do an adequate enough job of giving him any time to [...]

With the suspension of Tanard Jackson for the first 4 games of the season, the Buccaneers coaching staff was forced to make a decision on who would be taking his place in the Starting Lineup.  They had a couple options at hand, one of which was just to plug backup safety Will Allen into the starting lineup and the other was to move Jermaine Phillips back to safety and allow Geno Hayes to take over his Will linebacker spot until Jackson returned.
The coaching staff made the decision today to move Flip back to safety, where him Sabby Piscatelli and Will [...]

While watching a replay of what will be this years worst team in the NFL, the Cleveland Browns, versus last years worst team, the NFL Network bottom line reported that the Bucs have begun contacting teams about shopping whichever QB doesn’t win the starting QB job.
When doing my 2nd Annual Roster Prediction last month before camp began, I said that the Bucs would move Byron Leftwich or Luke McCown, whichever QB didn’t win the QB battle.

QB – Luke McCown, Byron Leftwich, Josh Freeman, Josh Johnson
This position is all very dependent on the progress that rookie QB Josh Freeman makes in camp.  If Freeman [...]

Buccaneers Head Coach Raheem Morris suggested a few weeks ago that the QB competition between Byron Leftwich and Luke McCown would be settled after the 2nd preseason game vs the Jacksonville Jaguars.  It now appears that this Thursdays game vs the Miami Dolphins will be the final round battle for both guys.
“Both of them played so well I don’t think it was fair for me to make a decision right now,” said Morris. “So I’m going to let these guys play it out another week. We joked about it yesterday, but we’re going to have to sit in that same [...]

There are a few areas of our team that going into training camp I was quite concerned about from an injury/criminal/suspension standpoint.  DB, WR, DL and QB are positions that we honestly could not afford to sustain injuries or suspensions at. 
Ronde Barber, Tanard Jackson, Aqib Talib, Sabby Piscatelli and Elbert Mack all seemed to be firmly entrenched into their starting roles (I’m counting our nickel corner as the starting 12th man on defense).  The only problem, is behind those 5 guys, we had a bevy of inexperience.  Will Allen has started at FS and SS and Donte Nicholson has been on [...]

The Buccaneers played their first preseason game Saturday night vs the Tennessee Titans, and from my vantage point little looked good.
Players and units that I thought looked good:

Clifton Smith – Smith made a few guys miss on 3 consecutive plays running the ball.  His elusiveness is something Jeff Jagodzisnki needs to find a way to utilize other than just on special teams.  Smith ran for 27 yards on 5 carries.
Kareem Huggins – Another Bucs backup running back, Huggins did his damage in the fourth quarter against players who most likely will not be on NFL rosters this season.  Huggins ran [...]

I haven’t been to camp this week because I crashed my beautiful Cadillac, but I’ll just give you guys some snipets from around the interwebs.

Josh Bidwell’s hip injury is potentially a season ending injury.  The Bucs filled the P void by signing veteran punter Dirk Johnson.  Johnson averaged 41.8 y/p/punt last season with 13 inside the 20 in 12 games with the Cardinals.
The Buccaneers released DT Greg Peterson.   His injury issues during the offseason certainly couldn’t have helped his cause.
Bucstats.com is saying that Luke McCown is gaining ground on Byron Leftwich this week in camp.  Neither looked great during [...]

The Buccaneers released their first depth chart for the first preseason game on Saturday vs the Titans.   Here are the interesting things in my mind…

Dexter Jackson is listed 5th on the WR depth chart ahead of Sammie Strougther.  I think those guys are battling for one roster spot with Maurice Stovall.
Torrie Cox is listed ahead of draft pick EJ Biggers for the 4th CB spot.  Biggers has been looking much better in camp lately and that should be a nice roster battle.
Matt Bryant is still the starting kicker as of this weekend.
My preseason roster predictions are spot on at [...]

First off, some personal updates of mine that I tried to Tweet, but Twitter was having issues.
These are from Friday mornings practice, a nice overcast one at One Buc Place.

Quincy Black and Demar Dotson got into a little skirmish on the field.  Nothing big, just Dotson holding Black for no reason, and Quincy turning around and drilling him in the face mask.
In the individual 3 on 2 defensive line/offensive line drills, Quincy Black repeatedly is making nice moves (a bevy of them) to get to the yellow flag
Davin Joseph pancakes people in this same drill like it is going out [...]