Anyone looking to cleanse the miserable death spiral the Tampa Bay Buccaneers experienced last season out of their system should probably avoid watching Week 1 film. As bad as the loss was, it's not the apocalypse it's being made out to be in the immediate aftermath.
That game stunk, let's be clear. The Bucs looked unprepared and overwhelmed. The good news is that it seemed to be entirely self-inflicted -- which isn't exactly great but also isn't unfixable. There's been a lot of overreacting going on, and rightfully so given that a 33-27 loss was the chaser to a 1-7 end to the season, but it's also not a reason to pack it in on the season just yet.
Biggest overreactions to Week 1 that Buccaneers fans can't get too serious about...yet
Baker Mayfield got paid and isn't going to show up now
There are silver platters and then there's whatever Baker Mayfield served up his doubters on Sunday. It's as if some satanic star alignment occured to feed the narrative machine exactly the right thing to feast on; Baker Mayfield gets paid and then he turns into a pumpkin.
From a pure entertainment standpoint, it's hilarious to the point of being too on the nose. For Bucs fans, it's turned an already sore subject into an even more painful sticking point. Baker already had the fan base divided and his historically bad performance didn't help ease any anxiety.
There's absolutely an argument to be made that the Bucs should have waited until next offseason to pay Baker and force him to prove himself. That doesn't align with everything we've heard locally about how much respect Jason Licht has for his quarterback and vice versa. The price of doing business wasn't $55 million a year, it was security. One game doesn't erase all of the good Baker has done with the Bucs, nor does it somehow nullify his potential impact.
Folks will be quick to bring up the Baker Cycle -- a rinse-and-repeat sort of gaslighting -- but cycles are made to be broken. He needs to get better and can't make the mistake he made on Sunday but the Bucs aren't where they are without Baker's grit willing them out of what should have been a total recession back into irrelevancy.
He's more like Jameis Winston than we'd like to admit, but he's much closer to the type of franchise quarterback a team can win with. He turned the ball over three times but let's not forget the headset issues that plagued the afternoon. Nor should we overlook how he got the offense going on multiple occasions; the fumble he had occurred at the goal line, a place the Bucs had a hard time sniffing last season.
Then there's the identity. He's always played with a chip on his shoulder and that eff you energy has pulled the Bucs out of deeper depths than just one loss. To think that the type of pitiful performance he had on Sunday will sit right with him is to admit that you haven't reallly paid attention that closely to the Bucs over the last few years. It's better to have this sort of game never, but better to have it to start the season than later when so much more is at stake.
Baker has let the Bucs down before but he's never given up. For a guy who takes every slight to heart, the idea of letting people assume he doesn't care anymore feels more like fuel than it does an excuse to count his money and coast.
Todd Bowles' defense is even worse than it was last year
Okay this one is a little harder to massage, and there's certainly not a lot of positivity going around about the defense. However, let's not forget how many new pieces the defense has and how a slow start isn't totally unbelivable when that happens.
The counter to this is well, look at the new-look Bengals defense and what they did but even the harshest Bucs critic will have to at least partially admit that Tampa Bay beat itself on Sunday. Turnovers count on the stat sheet, but boneheaded mistakes led to costly turnovers that ended up as points on the board.
If we're picking nits, none of those Baker Mayfield turnovers were the defense's fault.
Both Josiah Trotter and A'Shawn Robinson graded out as standout players across both defenses according to PFF. Nobody on that BEngals defense outranked them, which is telling for how flimsy the logic is that the Bucs got walloped by an elite unit and didn't shoot themselves in the foot at every opportunity.
Beyond that, for as dour as everyone is about the unerwhelming debut of Reuben Bain Jr., Calijah Kancey was the highest-rated defensive player on the team with an impressive 83.3 grade. He wasn't alone, either.
Player | Week 1 PFF Grade |
|---|---|
Calijah Kancey | 83.3 |
Al-Quadin Muhammad | 82.5 |
Benjamin Morrison | 78.5 |
A'Shawn Robinson | 78.3 |
Josiah Trotter | 72.8 |
We're doing a fair amount of mental gymnastics to swing this as something to not totally panic about, but look at Trotter's day. HIs 72.8 grade is way higher than it was going to be after his rough start; after settling in he had a pick-six and a sack that turned his debut around.
If we're looking for reasons to be positive, that's one of them. The idea that Trotter can get his footing and perform like advertised in the preseason is a sign that the defense as a whole can't be judged by one game.
Struggling against Deshaun Watson and the Browns next week will be reason to panic. We're not there yet, though.
The season is already over
As annoying as the loss on Sunday was, it's just one game. It's pointless to project too far into the future based off a small sample size, even if that sample feels like a contiuation of a larger problem that's plagued the Bucs for years.
The truth of the matter is, we don't have control of the car and until it careens off a cliff we have to assume we'll find the road again. Losing to the Browns next week -- a team that is absolutely atrocious on every level -- certainly feels like a point of no return but even that is thinking too far ahead.
It's admittedly naive to harp on the fact that the Bucs last started 0-1 the year they won the Super Bowl, but it's a reminder of how long the season is. Fans in Tampa should know that based on how last year's hot start disinegrated into a losing season in just a month.
There's nothing wrong with doubting the team can be successful based on the trainwreck we saw on Sunday but we've also watched this Bucs team navigate out of choppy waters before. Remember back in 2023 when a winning streak over the last third of the season pulled them out of a 1-7 midseason slump? Or what about the next year when the Bucs pulled up from an 0-4 nosedive into their bye week?
The loss to Cincinnati was gnarly, there's no sugar-coating it. It's different, though, to have the game swung by four preventable mistakes than if truly institutional things like poor blocking, bad route running, or a general lack of care was present. Maybe that's coming, but the point is we don't know for sure and it's pretty lame to write a team off after one game -- even as bad as that loss felt.
Recency bias has us all focused on how things ended last season, and that might end up being a harbinger more than I'd like to admit. But until we truly see the Bucs fall into a hole they can't climb out of there's no reason to stress about it before it happens.
One game isn't enough.
Add us as a preferred source on Google