Buccaneers: Biggest roster cut shows a stark change in offensive identity

Tanner Hudson is done with the Buccaneers.

As the Buccaneers continue to change their identity even after winning the Super Bowl, Tanner Hudson is one of the recent roster casualties in the effort of maintaining upward progress.

Hudson was a great preseason story and a scrappy player that was easy for the fans to root for, but his inability to block and sub-par catching during the regular season wasn’t enough to keep him on the roster.

Now, with it looking likely that the Buccaneers will only keep three tight ends on their roster, it looks like the offensive identity in Tampa is starting to shift.

The Bucs loved to lean on 12 personnel during the early stages of the Bruce Arians era, but this formation often did more harm than good in the ways the players were called. Running out of 12 (one running back and two tight ends) disregards modern analytics, and Byron Leftwich is hopefully starting to make some changes in the play-calling.

Tampa needs to live with three wide receivers on the field. With the talent in the WR room already, 12 personnel actually takes a much better player off the field, and this decision hopefully remedies this problem.

Hudson and Auclair already didn’t see the field much last season, even with four tight ends on the roster, but the opportunity to keep seven receivers and move forward with a more pass-focused attack could be too much for the Bucs to overlook.

Even if one of the other tight ends just lines up off the line of scrimmage, the Bucs are moving in the right direction offensively by moving on from Tanner Hudson.

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