Juice.
Joe is not going to go bananas over an underwear football practice in June. This week’s OTA practice will be long forgotten in two months.
The main thing that jumped out at Joe on Tuesday, Joe mentioned this in his practice notes and spoke about it with the Sage of Tampa Bay sports, the great Ira Kaufman on his podcast, but there was a ton of energy coming from the defense on Tuesday.
This was welcome. Last year the Bucs defense played lethargically and uninterested. This rocked Joe because the Bucs were in the thick of a hunt for a playoff berth.
That’s one reason why Joe thought the defense, at least some players, threw in the towel on KitKat-eating Bucs coach Todd Bowles. Shameful attitude. Shameful play.
The Bucs made it clear this offseason they were determined to bring in physical dudes who brought juice to the practice field and on gamedays. Physicality naturally brings juice. Even players love it when a teammate lays the wood to an opposing player.
But you cannot get physical in underwear football. There is no hitting of any sort. Quarterbacks wear creamsicle jerseys. Close friends Lions coach Dan Campbell and Bowles both took turns in recent days referring to underwear football as “a pajama party” or “two-hand touch” and “flag football.”
They’re not wrong.
So it’s hard to be hyped about underwear football. Yet Bucs defensive players brought it on Tuesday. It made the practice, um, fun.
Joe has seen this before, just not in OTAs. Back in 2020 and 2021 Joe saw this often, specifically in 2021. The defense had swag and attitude and pride, as did the Bucs offense.
And man, there were some wars between the Bucs offense and the defense. Joe remembers one particular practice that got moved inside the Glazer Shed for inclement weather. The Bucs had a live, 11-on-11 session that was basically a live scrimmage.
Think of the players who were going at it, all with pride and passion. Tom Brady, Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Antonio Brown, Playoff Lenny, Tristan Wirfs, Ryan Jensen, Ali Marpet, squaring up at it against Vita Vea, Ndamukong Suh, Jason Pierre-Paul, Shaq Barrett, Lavonte David, Devin White (when he was good) and Antoine Winfield. Wow.
Joe remembers watching that practice and standing on the sideline with a Bucs security guard. At one point he turns to Joe and asks, “You believe what we are watching?” Joe said, “This is some high-level football.”
As the practice came to an end, Joe said to the security guard, “Remember what we just watched. We may never get to see something like this again.”
And yeah, there was some juice flowing through the Glazer Shed.
Now Joe is not trying to compare a bunch of Hall of Famers fighting for pride and honor in a live scrimmage to an OTA practice, let’s not get ridiculous. But the juice on Tuesday was welcome.
Will that carry over to the regular season and result in wins? Time will only tell.
But as Aileen Hnatiuk of WFLA-TV Channel 8 said, it certainly appears to be a green flag.
@aileenhnatiuk #bucs #nfl #tampa #fyp ♬ original sound – Aileen Hnatiuk