This week, there has been more attention from both the local and national media on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers than at any point since Tom Brady signed with the team.
Everywhere you looked, there was discussions about Baker Mayfield and his contract situation. I even received a text from someone asking for my take on the whole thing.
The Buccaneers don’t play their first regular-season game for another six weeks, but that hasn’t stopped the NFL machine from operating at full speed.
Even though the NFL has the shortest season of the four major professional sports (MLB, NBA, NHL), it’s a year-round business. Outside of a brief lull after the Super Bowl, it almost always dominates the sports headlines.
Training camps are now in full swing across the league. Fans are getting their first look at their teams, and with the exception of a few franchises, every fan base believes this could be the year their team becomes a contender.
For the Buccaneers, this may be their most important season in years. There are enough storylines to fill a novel—and that’s before they’ve even played a game.
Once the season begins, every decision, every play, and every game will be dissected, criticized, and analyzed. And isn’t that exactly why we love the NFL so much?
Each game lasts only 60 minutes, yet we’ll spend hours looking back at what happened and even more time previewing the next matchup. No other sport lends itself to that kind of week-long discussion.
Baseball, basketball, and hockey don’t have that luxury. They play so many games that one loss rarely changes the course of a season.
In the NFL, you get only 17 opportunities to prove yourself. Every training camp practice, every meeting, every workout, every film session—it all comes down to what happens on game day. Are you better than the team across from you that day? There isn’t much room for error because a few bad performances can send your season off the rails.
And if it does, your team will be scrutinized, dissected, and analyzed all the way until next season.
That’s exactly why we love this game.
Greg has been nominated for “Best Columnist” in Creative Loafing’s Best of the Bay. If you would like to vote for me here is the link.
For more from Greg click here, then make sure to 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.
