Um ay there, Good morning, Bucks fans. How's everyone doing on this Wednesday morning time for Buccaneers in Center Live presented by Miller, Lank Casey Phillips. Here was senior writer and editor Scott Smith and as always, this is where we take your questions. So if you have one of those,
head on over to the Buccaneers Facebook page. If that is not already where you're watching, you can leave those in the comments section underneath our live video again on the Buccaneers Facebook page as we give people chance to start submitting some of those, I know, we have just like a little, a little tiny injury update. It may not be one of the injury updates people were expecting us to talk about right off the bat, but it is some news that we wanted to address to tell
everybody what that is. Yeah, Well, long snapper Zach Trenner, who suffered a torn tendon in a finger on his left hand in the season opener, has been designated to return to practice. So it's the same thing that we began a few weeks ago with Scottie Miller and Sean Murphy bunting. He's on injured reserve still, but now there's a twenty one day window in which he can practice with the team and not count against the fifty three man roster, and you can choose to activate him at
any time during that span. So UM, I would assume that Zach Trinner will get his job back. I think in most cases like this, guys don't lose their job due to injury if they come back good. And although we have to say Carson Tinker obviously has done a nice job, and I say that because I've never heard the words Carson Tinker in any of the game broadcasts, so that if that means a long snapper is doing his job well, isn't that so sad for the guys that the only reason you ever hear their name is
if they're doing something wrong. It's basically him and offensive lineman, and that's that's how you know things are not going well. We sit in the in Washington. The press box is in the one of the end zones and pretty close to the stands, and I saw a man there in the stands with a jersey that was for Cameron Cheeseman,
who is the Washington long snapper. I figured that was probably Cameron Cheeseman's dad, But I wonder what it's like to be the parent of a long snapper at a football game because your son's only involved in, you know, a few plays, but everyone he basically has to do his job perfectly. It would be kind of nerve wracking the whole time because that would be very stressful. That's
pretty great, all right. So outside of that news, UM, what do we know injury wise for the litany of other players that I'm sure people are going to ask us about, um, and when might we know more things? Let's just kind of go down the line of of what we know and what we don't. I'm sure we don't know as much as the fans here would like us to know. Uh, And we'll know a little bit more in the next couple of days. Monday, I mean, yeah, wait, Monday was a bonus and I'm getting my days mixed up.
Monday Day is a bonus practice. But UM, coach Arean's did talk on Monday and the two big questions injury wise coming out of that game, where Vita Villa and Richard Sherman, and it's a mixed bag of news. It's pretty good news on Vita Via considering how that didn't look good and how he had to be carted off, and it was just so unfortunate it happening on the
last play defensive play of the game. You started worrying about what happened last year and missing out on Vito is one of the clearly one of the best nose tackles in the game. Uh. He has apparently a bone bruise and a slight as as coach put it, a little uh mc L injury. So it's not like a torn a c L, which would be season ending, he said. Coacharian said he's not sure about this week, but it's
not apparently long term, so I would be surprised. And I don't like to speculate too much on injuries, but even an m c L injury usually keeps a guy out for a week or two. Um. And then Richard Sherman apparently doesn't look real good because coach said he would not be back anytime soon. He suffered a calf injury in warmups before the game, but after the enactors had been submitted, so the Buccaneers had to play a man short. Essentially, Yeah, just the worst possible time to
suffer an injury at that point. UM, So yeah, I think it's the injury stuff is interesting. What do you think, in terms of the different injuries we've had, of which one seemed to be impacting the team most and which ones do you think will be the most important to come back as quickly as possible. Well, when we talk about these injuries, we have to acknowledge that every team
has them. We probably don't have more than the average team that and you know, in some places, like the say the offensive line, it seems like every time we play another team, they have one or two guys that are out or just coming back. Our offensive line, knock On Wood, has enjoyed a lot of good health this year and last year as well, but we have a concentration of injuries this year at cornerback and now Richard Sherman gets hurt. D Delaney suffers a concussion. It's it's
been difficult. It's been sort of impressive the way they've been able to use different guys and you know, and keep the defense relatively solid. But it hasn't been easy to deal with. And now they'll be more shuffling. But maybe Sean Murphy Bunting will be back this week. He's been practicing. He practiced with the team all last week
he might have been close to being activated. I think Coach arians is just concerned that he is back to completely utilizing his arm where he had the dislocated elbow, because Coach said at the beginning of last week he was not using that arm during just and obviously that's not gonna work for a cornerback. But by the end of the week he was using his arm a lot more. So I would say that if he looks like he's back to normal with that arm, he's probably close to
being activated. Okay, and Alec had asked how different has the offense looked without specifically Gronk and A B. It seems like the offensive efficiency is down when they are not playing. Yeah, I think to some extent. I mean it depends. I mean we're still pretty good against Chicago. I can't remember. I know Gronk wasn't in that game, but I can't remember if A B was, I don't think. So it takes away two weapons that obviously Tom Brady
is very comfortable with. Obviously he has a comfort level with Grounk because the Buccaneers have pretty good tight ends in Cambrad and O. J. Howard. But we're really not getting a lot of production out of those positions. Cambrady did catch a touchdown in this last game, which was great to see, but um, and then with Antonio Brown, he does have that. I mean, he just runs good routes. He has a lot of run after the catchability, He can play on the outside and go deep, he can
take short passes and do a lot with them. And I just you know, guys like Jalen Darton and Tyler Johnson are just at the beginning of their career figuring things out like that. And Tom Brady knows if he put the ball in in Antonio bronze hands, there's a good chance something good is going to happen. So I do think it has hurt the Bucks offense, But I mean,
let's not get too greedy here. We did come off kind of a unfortunate performance in Washington, but the Buccaneers are still third in the league and scoring and I think first in passing, first or second in passing, so the offense is still working. But I do think it will be a lot better with those two back. Okay, and Market asked, how is the spirit or mindset of the team. Do you see the snowballing into something bad or at just being this one little stretch. I really don't.
I don't see its snowballing. I think the guys are a little irritated right now. I think they're mad at themselves, and I'm sure there's some, you know, some guys veterans maybe trying to get everybody on the same page and get them to start playing more disciplined football. I think they're probably irritated because they thought that this problem would be fixed coming out of the bye and then it wasn't. So I just say they're literally irritated right now. But
I don't think this is gonna snowball. I really don't. I think these are things that the Buccaneers can correct, and all the pieces are still there, especially some we're going to get back for the Bucks to be playing at a high level, and I truly do think that's what's going to happen down the stretch. And there were some good signs on defense. Obviously, the big problem on defense in Washington, and it's not something I think will be duplicated, is that they just couldn't get off the
field on third downs. But they only allowed four point five yards per play. If if they had been able to get off the field on four or five of those third downs, the game would probably come out a lot different. But you also saw five sacks. We've been looking for more of that, especially against the mobile quarterback. You saw Lavante David make a big play, Devin White had several big plays, and we've been looking for more
big plays out of those inside linebackers. I actually think the defense is poised to do a lot better down the stretch, especially if we get some of those corners back. Yeah. I think that's a great point. It was so good to see Devon make some of those splash plays because I think even while there were games that he did everything right in terms of being where he was supposed to be or whatever, we we had gotten very spoiled by him making some some big plays and get some
of those big stats. I think it was great to see him get those sacks in there. Uh. Samuel had asked, do you think Monday night's game against the Giants that the game plan will be based on running the ball to own the clock. Um, I'm not exactly sure why that would be the game plan. Uh. I think maybe he's asking because of the way that that last drive went up just seeing how often the Bucks weren't on the field offensively. Maybe maybe that's part of the question.
You know, we we had it. Yeah, that was a big, long drive and we ended up with almost a two to one disparity and time of possession in that game. But that hasn't really been an issue for the Buccaneers this year. Before that game, they were averaging about thirty
two minutes of time of possession. So, you know, I think the Buccaneers are gonna do what they always do when they're gonna They're gonna want to try to be balanced, run the ball efficiently enough that it you know, it makes your play action game have more bite to it, and uh and and run the ball more if you get a lead and and try to run down the clock. Then but this the team is not going to stop passing the ball all over the place. Tom Brady is gonna throw forty passes a game. It works, So I
think they'll keep doing it. I don't think it was the game plan in Washington to chuck down as many times as we did. I think that just developed and it wasn't what they wanted to do. That's just what ended up happening. I don't think that's going to be a game plan for us going forward, and I think
they will try to make more big place downfield. It's just when teams are attacking you constantly with two high shells, it's a little harder to do that, but you find your ways, like Tom did with Mike Evans towards the end of that game. All right, well that is going to do it for us. On this edition of Buccaneers Insider Live presented by Miller Lite, thank you guys as always for joining us and for all of those amazing questions, and we'll see you next week.