In a pinch.
“This Joe” has always said, you play for the playoffs or you play for the draft. And the Bucs are on the cusp of the latter this weekend.
Since the playoffs were expanded to 14 teams in 2020, 16 percent of 0-2 teams have reached the playoffs.
The Bucs haven’t started a season 0-2 since, fittingly, lousy Lovie Smith’s first season as head coach in 2014. The Bucs have never made the playoffs after an 0-2 start.
But it gets worse. Since 2020, just one team has made the playoffs after an 0-3 start. That was last year’s Houston Texans.
And this just in: The Bucs don’t have anywhere near the defense of last year’s Texans.
Joe knows the Bucs could still pull this off. The numbers do not factor in the horrid NFC South landfill. So even though the Bucs may be off to a horrid start, the division remains a joke.
Joe knows what Team Glazer tends to do when a coach has back-to-back losing seasons with no playoff appearance in either.