Injury Updates, Vita Vea's Impact | Bucs Insider

video as we give people a chance to start doing that. Um, we figured, of course injuries and all of that that's always where we start. That's always the big storyline for everybody. And we did get an injury report again yesterday. Um there was some good news, some bad news, some things about it, so we figured we'd just go ahead and

start there with what we know at this point. Well, the one player that made an improvement on the report was Antonio Brown, who went to full participation despite his knee injury that he's been dealing with for a few weeks now. So that's obviously very a good sign. I think at this point you can feel pretty optimistic that he will be available for the Super Bowl. Um. The three other guys that were limited, UM, Jordan Whitehead, Antoine Wentfield,

and Lavonte David all remained limited. Coach said they ran around and looked good. So again, I'm feeling fairly optimistic about all of it. Um. The bad news, or at least the new thing on the injury report was Cam Brait was added the title with a back injury. Uh,

it's it's it'll be interesting today. We'll probably be the key day to see what his status is in practice, because sometimes when you see a player who was not on the injury report to begin the week added to the report as limited on the next day, it means he got hurt in practice, and the reason he's limited is because he was fine and he got hurt and he didn't finish practice, therefore he was limited. That is the case sometimes when you see this. So we'll have

to see what it looks like today. UM. You know, we obviously have our fingers crossed, not only because the team needs cam Brad, who's had a fantastic playoff run so far, but just because we sure don't want him to miss this Super Bowl. That you know, He's one of these guys like Lavante and Mike Evans that have been around for here for a long time and have waited a long time for this day. Yeah. And we will be getting the final injury report today, correct, Yeah,

that's correct. That will actually have the game designations, and unlike last week, it will actually be about this game. It will mean something. It's compared to the one last week that didn't mean a whole lot. So, uh, stay tuned everybody for the injury report today that will have the whole questionable out you know, all that kindably about mid afternoon two or three something like that. Yes, Um.

And also I know we had been asked a question earlier this week that we didn't know the answer to at the time, so, UM, I know you did a little bit of research and figured it out. We've had a few different people ask us where injured players will watch the game from and meeting guys especially like O. J. Howard, Alex Kappa, guys that you know are have been out and we're out in that kind of thing. Um, what

did you find out about that? Yeah, I've been over to the stadium a few times, Um, since the season ended. While they were preparing the stadium for the Super Bowl, and they were building some thing in the south end zone opposite worthy Pirate ship is And at first I thought it was extra seats, but I guess I didn't really need extra seats this year. So it actually is two levels worth of improvised basically luxury suites or boxes

booths I guess you'd call them. And one of those is going to be for the guys on injury Reserve, so they're gonna be there in that booth. So I think that's a pretty good deal that they're gonna be I was a little concerned that they might not be allowed to come to the stadium, So that's a good deal. Yeah, And uh, we had someone bring up the weather forecast. It had been saying rain was a chance. Now I feel like it looks like it's saying that's more earlier

in the day and won't be an issue. But if rain became an issue, how do you feel like that would impact each team and who might either benefit from it or be harmed more by that. Who do you think that would favor. I'm not sure that would really favor anybody. Both these teams are are high powered passing teams. Uh, you know, there are the Chiefs and the Bucks are one two in passing yards this season. Um. They both have good kickers who have who are used to a

lot of different conditions. Um, so it's it would be a negative effect on both teams, I would think, But I'm not sure it really favors one or the other. You know, normally you might think it's the Buccaneers because in a normal season, we play through a couple monsoons during the season here in Tampa. But it didn't really happen this time around. We've been pretty we've been pretty

fortunate in terms of avoiding bad weather. Yeah, and I mean I guess that Do you feel like that would be a situation where they would rely more on the run game if that were to happen, or do you think they would still just try to execute as well as they can in the rain but they're not. Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on the severity of the rain. If it's if it's not like an absolute torrential downpour, I don't think you really changed the game plan too much. If it is a game that forces

you to put the ball on the ground. Um, maybe the Bucks have a bit of an advantage. Neither team was really among the leaders this year in rushing yards, but the Bucks running game has been pretty good during the playoffs, so um, you know, maybe they'd have a bit of an advantage. But I'm hoping we don't have to worry about this because I'd rather not have to deal with the rain in the Super Bowl. Yes, my press seat will be uncovered and outside, so I also would like to not do that as is mine. Yes,

that will that will be not as fun. Jose asked what are some lessons learned from the game versus the Chiefs earlier this year. What do you think would be the one or two biggest things that they learned. Well, you know, one of the I guess lessons is probably something that it will be hard for you or out

of quantify. But I'm sure they have watched plenty of tape of the first half and um trying to devise the best ways to slow down Travis Hill, I mean Travis Kelsey and Tyree Hill, which is a tough challenge for any team, but you know, tie bowls and those guys have been working at it and have a game plan they're confident in. Um, you know, other other than that.

One of the lessons are basically, don't be bad on third down, on offense early on, and don't throw interceptions in the second half when you're when you're trying to make a comeback. I mean those are fairly obvious things that you can say but actually have to execute. Yes, Um, this is an interesting question. Richard asked, who will you be happy for the most when the Bucks win the Super Bowl. I like to win, and they're both wins wins. Um, yeah, it's probably I don't know if there's one guy, but

it's probably. It's all the guys. Lavonte David obviously comes to mind. Um, Mike Evans, those guys have been around for a long time. Will Golston. Probably Lavonte though, because you know he's the guy that Mike Evans is a phenomenal receiver that might end up in the Hall of Fame, right. But I I feel also like he's gotten a pretty good amount of attention and credit for how good he is,

which is good. I'm glad that he has. We all know that Lavonte David has been perennially underrated and remains that way. So put those two things together. The fact that you want these guys have been around for a long time and been through the ups and downs and some hard seasons to have that. But then add in the fact that Lavonte David has been underappreciated and maybe this would help with that, I'd probably go with the linte. I'm guessing you feel the same way. Yeah, that's literally

almost word for word. But I was going to say I was gonna Vonte and Mike, and I would say, but Mike has definitely gotten more attention for other things. Now, I'm sure that everyone on that team will be equally as excited. So this is not about who we think will value with the most. It's more just who we would be most excited for. And I agree that I want Lavonte to get more of that attention that he deserves. I kind of would like to be able to see, Um,

Tom Brady to do this though. That'd be pretty cool. Yeah, that's insane, that's just that's ridiculous thing to think about. Curtis asked, do you think it will be better to jam wide receivers or play zone. I think it'd be better to mix it up. Um, And actually, this is gonna come as a surprise to probably most of the people out there. But I recently was reading some numbers, and the Buccaneers coverage numbers. What they allowed was this entire season as a whole was actually better in zone

than it was in man. And that's not what a lot of people are gonna want to hear, because I feel like everybody hates zone coverage because they hate to see a guy just run to a spot and make an easy catch, and like, why don't we just man these guys up? But you have to mix it up, right, You can't always play the same thing, And um, I think we're gonna mix it up. Uh. I would suspect

there's there'll be a pretty good dose of man. I think that they're going to probably do a lot of leaving the safeties over the top and and then letting these guys underneath play man just because it's they're gonna say, all right, we're gonna were you got these great guys, we got these great defenders. We're gonna go man to man and see who wins. I would think that's part of the philosophy. And you sort of related to that. James asked, do you think we will blitz mahomes more

than last game? Well, probably because we only blitz Mahomes of our snaps and if you know Todd Bowls, that is very uncharacteristic. Um. He that was the lowest blitz percentage we did against any team all season. But there's a reason for that, and I think I may have mentioned it a couple of times in these past few weeks. Um.

Patrick Mahomes's numbers against the Blitz are sick. I mean, your base gale turning him into the best quarterback of all time if you blitz him, because his his pass rating career against the blitz is something like a hundred thirty five. It's just insane. Now, this is what you have to understand. There's a difference between Patrick Mahomes against the blitz and Patrick Mahomes against pressure. Against pressure, his numbers go down because he's an actual mortal human being,

which is hard to believe. Um. So you if you can get pressure on him, that's a very good thing, just as it is against virtually every quarterback. The problem is not every blitz produces pressure, and not every pressure comes from blitz. So the best thing for the Buccaneers is if they would be able to consistently get pressure with the four man rush, which is what happened in Green Bay, and we saw how good those results were.

You can't count on that, but I think that's what they'll try first, and if they have to go to a blitz them, I'll go to a blitz. But it's playing with fire to do that against Patrick Mahomes. Yes, for sure. UM Francisco asked if we get down early like we did last time, do you think we can rally back? Well, we have shown the ability to do so m a few times this year. The the Los Angeles Chargers game certainly comes to mind, the Atlanta game

in particular in Atlanta. UM. The problem with doing that against Kansas City is you in order to make a comeback from what ten seventeen points down, you have to also stop them, and that's putting yourself behind the eight ball. If you're trying to come back, which the Bucks tried to do against the Chiefs last time. I think they're down seventeen nothing, maybe twenty three at one point, and they came back to within three points. But you just it's hard to keep them from continuing to add on

to their score. So let's just not do that. You know, the Buccaneers since that bye week, and other than the Atlanta game, I've done a much better job of starting off fast, you know, like last week in Green May went right down the field, scored on the opening drive, and headed I think lead at halftime. So, um, it's possible, obviously, but it's just really putting yourself in a hard spot

if you're down double digits to this team. It is so interesting that Tom Brady has not scored touchdowns into for quarter of his Super Bowl weird flukey stat and it clearly has not kept him from winning the Super Bowl, So we can at least have that as a sigh of relief if they do start a little slow, that he does seem to know how to win them without scoring a touchdown in the first I probably should have factored in the fact that we have Tom Brady when

I was talking about comebacks or not. Patrick Mahomes is proven to be the comeback king in recent playoffs, but Tom Brady certainly has plenty of yeah, a body of evidence and coming back in the bag that seems to know how to do that. Um. Trevor asked, I don't think the Chiefs have an answer for Vita Vea. What do you think and I want to just kind of add on in general, how you think they're going to handle our entire front seven, because that Chief's offensive line

has gone through a lot of changes. Yeah, since the beginning of the season. I think they're They just had maybe one of their original five starters left. Um. Yeah, Davea is a tough It's tough for any team to handle. Uh not just you know, he can hold up two blockers. He can basically he can basically account for two gaps in the running game in most plays. Um And as we saw in the Green Bay game, he was actually getting some pressure that was forcing Aaron Rodgers to run

towards Shack or towards JPP. I think mostly Shack. But um yeah, I think they may not. I don't know if they have an answer for him. It probably means more than one blocker. But that's good for us on the edges where they're trying to get by with Mike Rimmer's at left tackle and uh I think Andrew Wiley at right tackle. And those aren't the guys they started

the season with. So and they had two very good tackles to start the season and through most of the season until Eric Fisher got hurt in the FC Championship games. So um, that certainly seems like an area that's an advantage for the Buccaneers. So let's see if it plays out that way. All right, well that is gonna do it for us. On Buccaneers Inside a live presented by Miller Lte. This is our final one before the game.

Thank you guys for being with us all season long, thank you for all the amazing questions, and we hope you guys enjoy the game on Sunday,