A Season Of Hope
August 13th, 2025
Lynchpin?
A man who has a serious, if not misguided, notion about the Bucs’ coaching staff still believes there is hope for the Bucs having a helluva season.
And that’s because in this man’s eyes, Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht has stocked the coaching staff with loads of talent.
Ben Solak of BSPN, who Joe finds usually has some very intelligent takes and perspectives, had a downright dumb take recently when he thought the Bucs coaching staff was one of the worst in the NFL.
But Solak believes that the Bucs have drafted enough talent that the team can overcome what Solak perceives as a coaching staff that can drag down the Bucs.
Reason for hope: Few teams draft better than the Buccaneers, who have built a contender from scratch in the post-Tom Brady era. There are reasonable coaching questions — they’re on their third offensive coordinator in three seasons — and there’s not a ton of proven young talent on defense. But this year’s draft class might change that. Meanwhile, the offense has all the pieces necessary to be a top-five unit once again.
Joe isn’t as high on this year’s draft talent saving the defense as much as Solak. That doesn’t mean Jacob Parrish or Benjamin Morrison weren’t good picks. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Joe is confident Jamel Dean keeps his starting gig, much to the dismay of the Sage of Tampa Bay sports and the Custodian of Canton, Ira Kaufman. Joe isn’t as sure about Zyon McCollum only because rookie Parrish has had that good of a camp.
But let’s say McCollum keeps his job and Parrish is the starting nickel corner. Does Solak really believe a rookie nickel corner is the answer to flipping a bad passing defense into a top-10 overall defense? That’s a bit much.
If anything, if fellow rookie, receiver Emeka Egbuka, blows up, he could have a major impact into the Bucs winning more games and making a deep run in the playoffs.