Buccaneers fans have had a very tumultuous three-week period. First, their team’s Week 1 game was moved to Week 11 as a Hurricane Irma precaution. Then, they witnessed a full-blown throttling of the Chicago Bears in Raymond James Stadium.
Now, following the Buccaneers’ Week 3 loss to Minnesota, the fanbase is feeling the painful sting of defeat. It’s a bad one too.
I don’t think any player, staff member, coach or partner would dispute the fact their loss to the Vikings was ugly. However, there have been some overboard reactions to the first loss of this season.
It’s not that I think any fan thought the team would go undefeated. In a league like this one, it’s hard to make the playoffs with a winning record sometimes, let alone win all 16 games.
So, there are some fans out there who are taking the calmer approach. It’s one loss. They happen. Even ugly ones happen to good teams. The Patriots didn’t expect to lose the way they did to the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 1. Yet, it still happened.
In Week 3, the Pittsburgh Steelers who simply embarrassed these same Vikings, got beat by the Chicago Bears team Tampa just spent the week prior dismantling themselves.
It’s a league of parity, and on any given Sunday, anything can happen. This is why the game has been so popular for so long.
No matter what we think will happen, there is always a David Tyree waiting to make a helmet catch, or a sixth-round scrub waiting to derail the once proud career of a quarterback in New England.
Maybe there’s a man bagging groceries somewhere right now who will become the 2018 Super Bowl MVP.
There are more examples, and here they are.