After seven games, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are just one of two teams left without a win. Their AFC counterpart, the Jacksonville Jaguars, were at least expected to play in such terrible fashion. The Buccaneers, by contrast, had hoped to make some noise in the playoff picture, but that ship has come, picked up its passengers and departed long ago, leaving the Buccaneers on the dock wondering what went wrong.
In reality, the Buccaneers probably aren’t one of the bottom five rosters in the NFL. Their defense should at least be competent, and with some help from the defense, Tampa Bay’s offense can at least score some points, but in the NFL, it’s not all about the roster.
Most, if not all, of the Buccaneers’ woes have been put on the shoulders of head coach Greg Schiano. When he entered the league, Schiano raised some eyebrows with his hard-nosed tactics, but hey, the Buccaneers won some games, and it looked like they may have been making headway.
Then the Josh Freeman saga started. Without rehashing all the old story lines, we can safely say that Greg Schiano’s already weak reputation was shattered.
More recently there have been reports of locker room unrest from anonymous players. When a coach starts losing their own locker room, they’re usually about to hit the road. Just up the road in Jacksonville, for example, the Jaguars are winless just like the Buccaneers. The difference? Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley’s always positive attitude has kept his team from throwing in the towel. That doesn’t appear to be the case with Schiano’s group.
With the Seattle Seahawks just around the corner, it’s hard to imagine the Buccaneers winning a game in the immediate future. At this point, barring a small miracle, the Buccaneers will be drafting at the top of the draft order, and they’ll be hitting the reset button. With over half the season left, it would make sense to move on from Greg Schiano and begin evaluating the roster and coaches. Heck, with Schiano gone, the team might get a psychological boost.
Regardless, the mystery of which head coach will receive a pink slip first seems to be solved. It’ll almost certainly be Schiano. The new question is, when will he be ran out of Tampa Bay?
