This off-season has been a very busy one for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With the hire of Bruce Arians and jettisoning of key players, to say this team has been shaken up would be an understatement. The Arians era so far has brought a clear culture change that is starting to ripple through One Buc Place. For so long things have been a certain way in Tampa, but this season it looks like that is changing.
Arians Is Shaking Things Up
This off-season the team has lost players like 9-year vet Gerald McCoy, Kwon Alexander, DeSean Jackson, Brent Grimes, and Adam Humphries. You would think the following season would spell disaster. That isn’t the feeling in Tampa Bay at the moment though.
Make no mistake it still could very well end up that way, but Arians & Co. have made surgical moves to this roster. The goal was to prune in all the right areas to give the team a real chance to grow. And then to cap it off with that key missing piece. Could they have found that piece in Ndamukong Suh?
Is Suh The “Missing Piece?”
When you look at the stat sheet it looks like a straight swap of McCoy for Suh. Both DT’s were taken in the top 3 of the 2010 draft, and both are considered among the best at their position. That is where the similarities stop though, as they couldn’t be any more different when it comes to how they get the job done on the field.
While McCoy is seen more as a gentle giant, Suh has had words like nasty tied to his play come game day. Even though both can be polarizing figures for completely different reasons, when you take a look at then off the field, they are very different. McCoy has been deeply involved in enriching the local community, and Suh on the other hand has exceptional business acumen. Suh even enlisted Warren Buffet as his business mentor.
The defense has been a top area of concern for the Bucs brass these past few months, and they having been looking for “that missing piece”. As Arians remarked earlier this month.
#Bucs HC Bruce Arians on making adjustments to the defensive line with the uncertainty of Gerald McCoy and Jason Pierre-Paul. pic.twitter.com/YhyB2jh5XD
— PewterReport (@PewterReport) May 11, 2019
Could Suh be that missing piece? Could his talent and edgy play just be the missing ingredient to kickstart this Bucs defense? Maybe. One thing is for sure though, if the additions so far are not enough Arians will scour the league until he finds that missing piece.
