The Buccaneers may think that Blaine Gabbert is the answer at quarterback, but Jameis Winston’s career tells a different story.
This is a very weird time for the Buccaneers. The quarterback conversations don’t show any signs of slowing down anytime soon, and as it stands, the future looks bleak at best on the quarterback front.
Bruce Arians and the head coaches seem to have an impressive level of faith in career backup Blaine Gabbert, but some of us are less impressed.
Gabbert hasn’t been good at any level of his career. From stats to team success, there is very little to be excited about with this option. The only selling point for Gabbert now is “well, his teams were bad, but the Bucs are better. Maybe he learned as a backup for a few years in Tampa.”
This line of reasoning is flawed and it also shows how soon Buccaneers fans have forgotten about Jameis Winston. Impossible, right?
As some fans defend Gabbert ahead of his potential future, many of these same people are the ones that bemoaned the idea that Winston could be coming back to Tampa after his stint with the Saints.
“We don’t want that turnover-machine” they spit.
Well, this may come as a surprise, but Gabbert hasn’t been great in that area either.
Gabbert has spent the last ten years in the NFL. During that time he has accounted for 53 touchdowns, 80 turnovers, and passed for 9,273 yards. For those keeping track at home, that is more turnovers than touchdowns, but that doesn’t matter because he sat behind Brady for two years, right? The turnover issues are fixed!
To put Winston and Gabbert’s careers in perspective, Gabbert throws a touchdown on 3.3% of his passes, interceptions on 3.1%, and averages 6.1 yards per attempt on 56.3% accuracy. On the other hand, Winston throws touchdowns on 5% of his passes, interceptions on 3.3%, and averages 7.7 yards per pass on 61.2% accuracy.
Normalizing these stats out over 500 passing attempts in a single season, here is where these guys stand on career numbers:
Winston: 306 completions for 3,850 yards, 25 touchdowns, and 16.5 interceptions
Gabbert: 281 completions for 3,050 yards, 16.5 touchdowns, and 15.5 interceptions
Bucs fans are likely in the comments right now talking about the fact that they would rather sell their season tickets than see Winston start again, yet they more than fine to watch a career backup post the above stats because there is an off chance that he learned from Tom Brady via osmosis?
Sports are silly. Jameis isn’t coming back and the Bucs should do everything in their power to find a better starter than Gabbert, but perhaps it would be best for people to start legitimately looking at who Gabbert is before they start to accept him as the savior of the franchise after watching how Winston was treated.
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