Jameis Winston made the decision to get into shape, during last year’s Pro Bowl. “I’m an early bird and so I woke up my first morning there and went downstairs for breakfast and I saw a couple of the other players coming back from the gym. When I first saw that I thought, ‘Hey, this is the Pro Bowl. This is supposed to be vacation time.’ But here were these guys and you know they’re still working hard, they’re still trying to get better. Then I went to practice that first day and I saw all the players that were there and everyone, you know they just looked the part. After that I was like ‘I have to get my body right.”
Jameis worked hard on strengthening and conditioning his body and it paid off, everyone noticed as soon as they saw him, and jokes were made that he now has a six pack. But that’s not the only thing he worked on this off-season, he also put plenty of time into studying the game and improving on his technique. Vincent Jackson even noticed, “You can tell he’s put in a lot of time in the classroom this off-season.”He’s cleaned up his quarterback skills a lot and just seems sharper with everything.”
The fact that Koetter will remain a big part of the Buccaneers’ offense, helps Jameis by not having him learn a completely new offensive playbook, something that has plagued many former Buc QB’s in the past. “It definitely helps that this is not my first year learning the offense. I don’t have to spend all my time trying to learn what my job is on the offensive side of the ball and that’s great. It’s allowed me to do a lot of things I never did before in the off-season, like work on my body, rest my body and work on my game. I mean, it’s been a great off-season.”
It sounds like Tampa might be finally improving, and this time for the good. The excitement is almost overbearing, as we sit in wait for the Pewter Pirates to return to the football field.
