Yeah so I don’t want anymore news this offseason. Just, no more. The Buccaneers will be missing their LT and arguably best player on the team for what will probably be four games, at minimum. It turns out that the knee injury he had was more severe than the team initially thought. We are now expecting Charlie Heck to start at blindside. I have a funny feeling he won’t be as good. Call it a hunch.
The schedule to start the year could be worse, but it still isn’t great. We’ll be facing the revamped Falcons pass rush, Will Anderson on the Texans, Jermaine Johnson on the Jets, and the Eagles’ pass rush. Fuck. And that’s assuming it’s only the first four games. The Bucs will be cautious with Tristan Wirfs, as they should, to make sure they don’t rush him back and cause more problems. We should expect the passing game to likely slump as well as the running game, although we’ll see if Grizzard is good enough to work around these limitations.
Right now, the focus is likely on whether the Bucs need to find someone in FA or a potential trade piece to fill in for the time being, but I think they probably stick with Heck, at least if Wirfs stays on schedule for recovery. This is fortunately not worst case scenario. The Bucs did deal with this last season with losing Goedeke for a chunk of games. This is worse obviously as Wirfs is a better player and plays a more premium position, but still. The Bucs have proven to be able to work around this with the resources on hand. This isn’t Ryan Jensen. Wirfs will hopefully be back five or six games into the season and be his all-pro self.
Want more from Devin? Click here, then follow him on Twitter.
Follow, Like and Subscribe to Bucs Report
BucsReport.com
For more on this and everything Buccaneers check back here hourly at BucsReport.com
