Buccaneers need to learn vital lesson from opponent disaster

NFL players don’t want to play with mediocre quarterbacks. Tom Brady saved the Buccaneers from themselves, but what will happen when he’s gone?

Tom Brady is the only reason why this Buccaneers team is still one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl in 2022. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or willfully-ignorant.

There is a lot to love throughout the rest of the roster, but nothing on any NFL team matters more than the quarterback. If you don’t have a top-12 quarterback, your odds of actually competing for a Lombardi drop off substantially.

Obviously, some teams slip through the cracks like the 49ers with Jimmy Garoppolo, but that is far from the norm. It is also worth noting that the difference between Jimmy G and a top-12 quarterback is still smaller than the difference between Blaine Gabbert/Kyle Trask/Ryan Griffin and a legitimate starter.

This was the future the Bucs were going towards. The front office is still saying that it was confident in this trio. Ticket sales prior to Brady returning showed a different level of confidence from the fanbase.

Still, the Bucs can preach their confidence in their depth quarterbacks all they want-it doesn’t change a basic fact in the NFL. Great players want the security of playing with a great quarterback. The Bucs have been a bit of an outlier by cultivating one of the best cultures in the NFL and seem to have some players that genuinely want to stay, but one has to think that free agency wouldn’t have gone as great as it did for the Bucs had Brady not returned for one more year.

We are all seeing this first-hand with the Packers.

The Packers should have Rodgers longer than the Bucs will have Brady at this rate and they still just lost the best wide receiver in the NFL because he is not confident in Jordan Love (amongst other things).

And let’s get one thing straight, Love would’ve been the first quarterback off the board in this class by a mile, and he is still a better NFL prospect than Trask at this moment.

If that is how Adams and some of his counterparts felt about playing with Love, how will Bucs free agents, and the rest of the league, feel about playing for Gabbert/Trask/Griffin?

Hint: the free agency flow that has been steady in Tampa for the last three years will dry up quickly.

Without Adams, the path to winning just got that much harder for the Packers, although they will still be a very good team.

This is just the way it goes in the NFL. And it needs to be hot on the minds of the Buccaneers the next time they think about sticking with mediocre quarterbacks to lead their team.

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