Hey there, Good morning Bucks fans. How's everybody doing, Casey Phillips, youre a senior writer and editor, Scott Smith. It is time for Buccaneers Insider Live, presented by Miller Lighte and Man, is it fun when we have breaking news right before our show. It's like they did it for us. I think they did. I think so that they were like, you know what, Casey and Scott are really gonna want to talk about this. Let's make sure we get this deal done now. So let's begin with the breaking news.
Tell us what it is. Well, the Buccaneers have signed veteran cornerback Richard Sherman, obviously five time Pro Bowl are, most recently in two He only played five games last year due to some injuries, but um, the last time he played a full season, he was in the Pro Bowl. I think this is still a player who can offer quite a bit, and it's it's important right now because the Bucks are having a little bit of trouble in
the secondary, both statistically and because of injuries. You know, Sean Murphy Bunting, we don't know when he's gonna come back. We don't know if Jamale Dean is going to be able to play this week due to the knee injury suffered against Los Angeles, And so I mean you go out, it's it's reminiscent of last year, really and how that worked. That worked out very well. Jason Knight was very aggressive
last year believing he had a championship roster. M Brady is your quarterback, and you know he made every aggressive move along the way. I know there are times when we signed Rob Gronkowski and Learned four and Antonio Brown where some people were just laughing, like are you gonna sign everybody that's available that's a veteran that you know has been good at some point in their career. And it all became important in the end. I think you remember every single point scored in the Super Bowl was
by a guy signed that year. So it's it's a continuation of that. The Bucks championship window was open, and Jason Knight is moving aggressively to make sure it does everything he possibly can to make take advantage of that. Yeah, And we had a question from Richard asking how soon can Sherman suit up? A question from Richard, do you think it's him he wants to know it is? Yes, Yeah, Richard, Sherman is asking us, Yeah, I'm ready to put me
in coach. Well, he could suit up immediately, could be if he's here, which I think he is because he physically signed. He could practice this morning in about an hour, and he could play against UM. I mean, is he I wonder if it's a is that a procedural question? Like so, I think there's probably there's probably a lot to it of one. We all know that the COVID rules have definitely changed sometimes people's availability of how long it took with the intake. But that's a little bit
different now this year with vaccines. But also I'm sure it might even just be would he be ready by Sunday? Yeah. The fact that he's a savvy veteran UM probably wouldn't have too much trouble picking up this defense leads me to believe he'll be playing pretty quickly this Sunday. I wouldn't count it out. I really wouldn't, especially if Jamal Dean can't go. And at the very least you have them active and you work him in, you know, to some degree, and if it's going well, then you just
keep him in. Yeah, And then Daniel had asked, how do you think his experience will help our younger players as well. Yeah, if there's any position on this team that they could use an infusion of of veteran know how an experience, it is the secondary. And you know, it's funny the league puts out after the first week of the season, the league puts out these notes about
the rosters. Who has the tallest average roster and the the youngest and the oldest and so on, and the Buccaneers, to nobody's surprise, after Week one, had the oldest roster in the league on average and had the most thirty plus year role players on their team. And that's sprinkled all around most positions, but not the secondary. The secondary was all very young and it was a good thing. I mean, as we saw last year at the end, that secondary was really playing well and it's all young players.
You can project that these guys can stay together for a long time, and that's that's a good thing. But it's also good thing now to have this veteran experience in that room, which really didn't happen. And we've had some people bringing up the idea of the pressure, uh that that was I mean, the coach Areans brought up after the game, and so let's just talk through the ways that the secondary effects the pressure and the pressure effects the secondary, and now bringing in Richard Sure, and
could that be something that helps with both areas? Sure? And it's everybody says it, including players, that the rush
and the and the coverage go together. They you know, they have to work together, and that you know, the guys in the secondary can help the rushers up front by covering longer and giving giving them longer to get to the quarterback because he has to hold onto the ball, and the guys that are rushing getting help the secondary by making him have to get rid of the ball quicker or not get rid of the ball at all,
or affect their throws. And that's all true, But in my mind this the rush is the thing that has to come first, because there's only so long you can cover in the NFL against any quarterback, but especially against the caliber of quarterbacks that the Buccaneers have faced so
far this year. And it was plainly obvious in the Rams game that after the first couple of series we had a couple of nice pressures and got off the field, but after that there was almost no pressure on Matthew Stafford, and he was sitting back there for a long time on a lot of plays, and you know, the secondary was doing the best they could good in some cases, Bruce Arians did have some criticism of some of some
of their technique and how they ran certain coverages. But in the end, you're just not going to be able to stop a good NFL quarterback from piling up the yards if there's no pressure on him at all. And then we gil Gilbert asked what I think is a little bit more of a rhetorical question, but I thought it brought up a good topic. He said, how did
Tom have the most rushing yards in the game? So I figured that would be a good jumping off point to talk about the run game and and why it maybe isn't a great thing when Tom Brady is yours. I mean there's good and bad here. I mean, he had a nine yard run, which I think might be as longest as a buckinger. Um, he had the one yard touchdown run. Uh. He had a six yard run
I think in the game before. And the funny thing is last year Tom Brady carried the ball for the Buccaneers in the regular season thirty times for a total of six yards. You just there was no mobility at all, and of course a lot that is kneel down because those all count as rushes. But the point is he was never gonna run last year. He still doesn't want to. After after the Falcons game when he had a key run, he was joking at the podium after the game about
how he was like nervous when he started run. He was looking at how him expecting to get ahead. It was all very funny, but it was clear running is not part of his plan. But the knee is better this year, and if he has to, he can pick up a crucial yard or two from time to time. That's a good thing. Obviously, it's not a good thing when he leads a team rushing because he's not Lamar Jackson. And his team leading total was fourteen yards, so none of our running backs had more than fourteen yards, and
that's a bad thing. Some of that has to do, as is always the case when you're losing by a couple of touchdowns, for the fact that you change your game plan and you throw the ball on almost every play. But the running game. We can't cover up the fact that the running game has not been effective yet and Bruce Arian says it enough that I believe him that he wants a more bounced attack. We just have not gotten there yet and you know he wants that so
the play action has more bite to it. And then we are to marry us asked, are there any updates on A B S and jpps health status? Um, And then I figured we could also just talk about if you know, if they are and if they aren't available, what that will mean for the team and stepping up for them after what we saw about how the team handled it this last week. I'm not optimistic about JPP just because the way that coach at answered the question
about whether he'd be available this week. He said the kind of thing like, well, with JPP, you never know, but made me made me think that he doesn't really expect JPP to to make it back by this game due to his shoulder injury, you know, And that's a shame. As we were just talking, the Bucks need more pass rush and he's a good pass rusher, so you miss him while he's out. UM. Antonio Brown went on the COVID list last Wednesday. If it's anything like Kevin Mintor's timetable,
we should feel pretty confident he'll be back. Kevin Minter went on the COVID list the previous Monday and just came off at this Monday, so it was one week for him. I mean, every guy isn't the same. You have to be asymptomatic and return to negative tests within twenty twenty four hours apart to come back before ten days, but that seems to be the case with vaccinated players. So I'm pretty optimistic he'll be back. And that's a good thing because I think Scotty Miller's injury is severe
enough that it may force him to injury reserve. UM. Coach called it pretty severe and a turf toe is a tough injury to overcome, so I know it doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty bad injury. It's one that often knocks guys out for a pretty significant amount of time. So his return would really be timely because I think we will be without Scotty Miller for a little bit, right And we also had a question from Bella asking how is Gronk and what kind of
percent will he be on Sunday. Well, we'll find out in the next few days. I think Coach was cautiously optimistic about it on Monday. You know, he did return to the game so after the injury, so at least you know he can play with it. Um. You know, there was the he coaches talking about after the game how the long flight back from Los Angeles was a bit of a bummer for players who are injured like Jamal because you know, injuries to like knees and other
joints tend to swell up on long flights. So but that was three days ago, so hopefully there's been time for those guys to recover. We'll see in the next couple of days. But I'm not too worried about Frankowski. All right, Well, that's gonna do it for us on this edition of Buccaneers Insider Live presented by Miller Lte. Thanks as always for joining us and those great questions. Enjoy the rest of the week and the game leading up to the Patriots on Sunday night. See then,