Buccaneers star unfairly putting the team in a difficult position
By Rob Leeds
A guy like Leonard Fournette knows better than to show up to Buccaneers minicamp overweight. This isn’t how you pay a team back for an extension.
The Buccaneers giving Leonard Fournette a long-term deal didn’t really come as a surprise. Fournette was the best back on the roster for the last two seasons and the playoffs, and the idea of letting Fournette and Ronald Jones walk in the offseason was silly.
Even a team like the Bucs needs guys that know how to play to keep their run game intact. Sure, the run may not be their focus, but a couple of rookies and a guy like Giovani Bernard wouldn’t keep the rushing attack on the same level.
The Buccaneers needed someone to carry the load on the ground, and Fournette looked like the perfect guy. Tampa made the right decision by keeping their starting running back for three years on a decent deal, but is Fournette going about it in the right way?
Everyone already saw what happened earlier in the Summer. Fournette missed the optional workouts and then showed up to minicamp badly overweight. The coaches were not pleased.
Is showing up to camp overweight and not coming to the optional workouts during a transition year how a guy thanks a team for taking a chance on him and his future? The Bucs probably overpaid by a hair based on the market, but Fournette has been one of those guys worth giving more money to during his time in Tampa.
Still, things like this can’t happen. Fournette is too important to loaf about after getting a deal like this. He will probably be able to lose the weight before the start of the season and this likely doesn’t stay a problem, but it isn’t a great initial look for a guy that just had a great start to his offseason.
The Bucs don’t have much outside of Fournette to lead their room during such a pivotal year and they will need him to fix the problem before the year starts to keep the room chugging along.
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