How does the promising young Buccaneers offense compare to the prolific Golden State Warriors offense? Let’s draw some parallels!
The only sport in the world that comes close to rivaling my love for football is basketball. The NBA has had a tough couple of years in terms of parity and competitiveness, and my poor Orlando Magic have sunk to Cleveland Browns-level futility, but even still I can’t abandon my joy for the game. The epic third chapter of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors Finals rivalry has begun, so naturally hoops are on my mind. So too, as usual, are the Buccaneers, and I think that there are some fun comparisons to be made between these two loaded offensive teams. I know this all might sound a bit absurd, but who cares? It’s the NFL off-season and we’re going to have some fun.
Though basketball and football are two vastly different sports, athletic traits can bleed over from one realm to the other. In both you have players too tall to guard, passers too accurate to disrupt, leaders too vocal to silence, and speedsters too quick to slow down. When I look at the players that make up the Buccaneer passing offense I see some of these shared traits with the Warriors.
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You have the undersized assassins in DeSean Jackson and Stephen Curry, two players so frighteningly explosive that they can flip the momentum of a game in the blink of an eye. Curry’s damage is often done from unusually far behind the three point line, while Jackson’s chaos is often done 50 or more yards away from the end zone. Then you have the floor/field generals in Jameis Winston and Draymond Green, two magnificent passers that facilitate the ball to their array of play makers. Winston and Green are both the unquestioned leaders of their team with alpha male personality traits that command the attention of the locker room. On top of their abilities as leaders and passers, both are versatile enough to make plays elsewhere – Winston with his scrambling, Green with his shooting and rebounding.
Finally, you have the monsters; the world-eaters, the conquerors of nations, the guys that are so athletically gifted that it’s almost not fair for the competition. Kevin Durant and Mike Evans both tower over their competition with long, lanky limbs and surprising athleticism from players their size, and both are the defacto top players on their team. Durant and Evans are the two blue-chip players that any championship team has some form of on their roster.
Like the Warriors, the Bucs have attempted to build an offense that most coaches can only dream about; a question that simply doesn’t have a right answer. Imagine a math problem with literally no correct solution and you have what Golden State has and what the Buccaneers want to establish this season. For both units there is no double team option, no person to hide your weak link against. If you help on Kevin Durant one of his all-star teammates will make you pay, and if you shade a safety over DeSean Jackson one of his all-star teammates will similarly make you pay. The additions of tight end O.J. Howard and receiver Chris Godwin have further added more fuel to this offensive nightmare machine, and can be the complimentary all-stars that the Warriors’ Klay Thompson and Andre Iguadala are.
A comparison could even be made between the coaching situations of the Bucs and Warriors. Both Steve Kerr and Dirk Koetter were hired to replace stagnating coaches in Mark Jackson and Lovie Smith. Both organizations felt that their trajectory was flat-lining as opposed to trending upwards and made correct decisions to usurp their current leadership in favor of offensive-minded coaches.
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The defining difference between these two teams is of course found in the all important victory category. The Warriors are appearing in their third straight NBA Finals, while the Bucs haven’t made the playoffs since 2007, when Stephen Curry was a freshman at Davidson College. The Bucs are now where the Warriors were in 2014 when they hired Steve Kerr as head coach. We’ll see if they can become football’s version of the Warriors.