This post is not intended to be callous and disregard Sears health, because that is obviously the first concern, but the impact to the Bucs would be fairly large.  Sears was begining to look like one of the best young gaurds in the game.  Combined with Davin Joseph, you would be hard pressed to find me a better young tandem in the league as far as potential and current ability are concerned.  

If Sears is not able to play, swing lineman Jeremy Zuttah would definitely step into Sears’ place.  Zuttah was a 3nd round draft pick 2007 and has been a very nice fill in for Sears and for Joseph during times of injuries.   I have even speculated this offseason that Zuttah might have gotten a chance to overtake the penalty prone Jeremy Trueblood in Jeff Jagodzinski’s new offense.  He is a very solid player, and will fill in just fine for Sears if it were to come down to that.  

The biggest issue would then be the depth on the offensive line.  Zuttah played every position except Center on the line in college, so having him as a backup is quite a luxury.  The Bucs are really only forced to carry two backup lineman as long as Zuttah is one of those two.  If he is forced to start, Sean Mahan would be the backup interior lineman and one of the few tackles on the roster currently, or a player on someone elses practice squad would have to come in and backup the T spots.  It is possible that depending on the versatility of said player, two T’s might need to be brought in, one to man each side.  This will have a direct correlation on the roster as we might not have the luxury of carrying 4 pure running backs, or 6 wide receivers or 7 or 8 defensive lineman.  

So not only does Sears injury effect the overall product moving forward, the potential for him to be out could have a devastating effect on the final 53 man roster.

Just like I said earlier, this seems like a simple swap of players, just with 3 different teams involved.  Pittsburgh nets a pick, the Bucs replace Buenning with Mahan, and the Bears acquire Buenning. 

The funny thing about this trade is the fact that Mahan and Buenning once looked like a promising core of lineman for the Bucs in 2005, starting all 16 games together.  Before last season though, Mahan was not retained and signed as a free agent with the Steelers, and Buenning continued his string of always being hurt.  I’d have to think that injury history had something to do with this trade.  With only undrafted Jonathan Lee and Anthony Davis serving as the backups right now, one injury would have thrust Buenning into the starting lineup. Given his dicey knees and injury history, maybe we weren’t willing to count on that.  Mahan isn’t a mauling beast like Buenning, but with the rest of our line more on the lines of mauling beasts, sans Jeff Faine, maybe the brass thought bringing in another Faine like player in Mahan was the right way to go.   

 For a league that is very devoid of trades, Bruce Allen seems to make plenty of them.  Last year we acquired Ryan Sims and Michael Bennett via trade.  Thomas Jones, Joey Galloway, Tim Rattay and Luke McCown have all been acquired via trade.  We have shipped off numerous players as well including Marques Douglas this season, Keenan McCardell, Keyshawn Johnson, Roman Oben and Booger McFarland.