Raheem Morris made a few call outs of players yesterday that more than irked me.  He has been shouldering the blame in that normal old coach speak in the post game press conferences, but he has a lot of audacity to call out his players, in public, on very specific plays.  He hasn’t had the nerve to call himself or his staff out on anything specific through three weeks of the season, but he sure has no qualms about calling out his players.
“Should he have squared his shoulders and tried to get the first down? Yes. Yes. He has to. [...]

Before I give you a lengthy rambling diatribe, I wanted to start out with a few quotes from the interwebs and radio airwaves about the Bucs performance yesterday.
Gary Shelton – Three games in, and the Bucs are winless. And helpless. And hopeless. And clueless.
Colin Cowherd – The Bucs offense is the worst offense in the NFL in the past two decades.
Martin Fennelly – We don’t even know if the Giants played well. We couldn’t tell. The key to victory was their plane touching down safely in Tampa.
Bucsstats.com – I had taken for granted for so long that football was supposed [...]

This will now be a weekly column that I do on the PewterPlank before I read the all too influential Bill Simmons!
Cleveland @ Baltimore

While divisional games normally yield closer results than some might think (see Oak, SD week 1 as well as Buffalo, NE week 1), the Browns are inept and the Ravens are studly.  This has a chance to be a real route.
Prediction  - Ravens 30 Browns 3
Line – Baltimore -13, O/U 38.5

Washington @ Detroit

A lot of pundits are picking this for the first win for the Lions since two years ago, and I tend to agree with them. [...]

The Bucs defense ranks 31st in the NFL through 2 games.  Watching the play on the field, somewhere around that number would have been my guess.
John Romano of the St Pete Times goes on another tirade about the Glazers lack of spending.
Antonio Bryant is non-committal about playing this Sunday vs the Giants.
The Bucs can’t tackle.  Once again, if you’ve been watching, you’d already know this.
Jermaine Phillips has a broken finger and might go on the IR.

The Bucs followed up Week 1’s home loss to the Cowboys with an embarrassing 33 to 20 loss to the Bills @ Ralph Wilson Stadium yesterday.  The same issues that plagued the team week 1 were not fixed in week 2 and some of the things that we actually did effectively in week 1 were not continued in week 2.
For starters, I couldn’t do a Good, Bad and the Ugly post this week, because other than Kellen Winslow Jr. looking like a real dangerous threat for the Buccaneers, there wasn’t much that we did well.
I know that we took an [...]

Hey Bucs fans.  I’m a new blogger on this site, so I figured with my first post I would give you some motivation for the game today.  I know everyone is a little down after last week, and to tell you the truth it might get worse this week, but let’s all take a deep breath and look at these 5 reasons to have faith in our beloved Bucs.

Byron Leftwich is setting the standard so low at Quarterback that Josh Freeman will have absolutely no pressure when he finally gets his chance to start.  As a veteran leader, I have to applaud Leftwich for [...]

The Bucs play one of their two 4pm games tommorow against the Bills.  Both teams are coming off of week 1 loses, albeit quite different ones.  The Bucs were dominated for 3 quarters against the Cowboys @ home last weekend while the Bills played a hell of a game until one turnover at the end of the game gave Tom Brady the one and only chance he needed for a victory.
A quick injury update – EJ Biggers was placed on the IR and replaced by Steve Cargile.  Cargile was picked up in the preseason after the Tanard Jackson suspension came [...]

For some reason I happened to miss this the other day, but as one of our readers has recently asked about the potential of Josh Johnson ever getting some first team run, I had to post these quotes up.
Raheem Morris on Josh Johnson
“I talked about him being my Jason Garrett, my career backup. . . You’re talking about preparing a guy who you think can be your long-term backup. You might as well put him in a game right now. That makes (him) prepare a little differently.”
Josh Johnson on Raheem Morris
“I can’t speak for the future honestly,” he added. “I [...]

With Jeff Faine getting hurt in the first game of the season, the Buccaneers were forced to make a few roster moves late Monday.
The first was bringing back two time Buc and recently cut Sean Mahan.  I would imagine that Mahan will be the main backup at center as rookie Jonathan Compas will get the start.  This is an unfortunate turn for the Bucs as the offensive line was one of the bright spots on Sunday, and Faine is its’ undisputed leader.   All I can read now on Faine is that he will miss a few weeks.
The Bucs also [...]

I must say for a little while yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised with the play on the field.  It almost appeared for a quarter or so, that we would have a chance at winning the game.  Too many mental errors, and some poor play from a couple different units and you end up with a 34-21 final.
The Good – The Running Game, especially Cadillac Williams
The team as a whole ran for 174 yards so it was an impressive day by both backs, Derrick Ward and Cadillac Williams.  It was really Caddy though that got the crowd fired up and showed [...]