The Lovie Smith honeymoon in Tampa Bay is officially over

A few months ago, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers filled their fans with so much hope for the future that we almost forgot that the team has absolutely no recent tack record of success and the hope we were being sold might as well have been coming from Bernie Madoff.

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Lovie Smith was supposed to come in and recharge the defense, re-tool the offense and bring back the old 2002 Buccaneers style of winning. Three games into the season and the Buccaneers are 0-3 and Lovie Smith’s vintage defense has allowed 1,161 yards of total offense and 95 points.

Tampa Bay, after the 56-14 shellacking by the Atlanta Falcons on Thursday night,  have been outscored 95-45 this season and are showing now signs of getting better.

Both Jim Nantz and Phil Simms openly pondered if the Thursday night loss was going to cripple the Bucs season and it very well might. But one thing that the loss proved is that the Lovie Smith honeymoon is over and the pain of being a Buccaneers fan has set back in now that whatever drug we were given this offseason has worn off.

It’s a painful truth to admit, but Lovie Smith looks like a bad choice as head coach at the moment. That’s admitattly a knee-jerk reaction to watching your team get shelled relentlessly before being gifted a few touchdowns late in a blowout. But the decision  making on Lovie Smith’s part has been poor, to say the least, and it needs to get better now.

There’s no longer anytime to reflect on his days with the Bucs on Tony Dungy’s staff or how he took the Chicago Bears to the Super Bowl in 2006 — Lovie Smith is in Tampa Bay and he has no wins as head coach. That’s the reality and that’s what we have to deal with.

From signing Josh McCown and how much a disaster that has become to the bad clock management in the St. Louis Rams game before halftime, it’s been bad decision after bad decision for Lovie Smith.

Things will get better, this isn’t the end of the world. But try telling that to a Bucs fan who stopped watching when it was 35-0 last night and is waking up wholly unsurprised that the Falcons hung 56 on the defense.

Nobody needs to be fired or released — yet — but something needs to happen in wake of this eye-opening blowout loss to the Falcons. The honeymoon is over and either Lovie Smith turns this ship around now or he risks losing the very Bucs fans who celebrated his return no less than eight months ago.