I Was Wrong, But...

The Buccaneers released their list of cuts a short time ago and looking through the list I was obviously wrong on some of the names I thought would be on there and some of the names I didn't think would be on there. But here's the thing, the Bucs are really playing with fire with the set up of their final roster, at least thus far. There is still the chance that there will be more changes in the days to come after other teams release their players but for now there are some things that worry me.

If you look at the cut list there's one thing that I believe is apparent. The Buccaneers refused to make any tough decisions. There were two major decisions that I and others thought they would have to face. One is whether they would keep Clifton Smith on the roster or choose to keep one of the fullbacks, specifically Chris Pressley. It appeared that the Bucs were experimenting with ways to live with only having one fullback on the roster this preseason by having other guys like Adam Hayward and Roy Miller fill in at that role in short yardage and goalline. On the other hand Clifton Smith hadn't been healthy for most of preseason and with Sammie Stroughter and Michael Spurlock AND Preston Parker making the team he's not really a necessity on special teams in the return game. Also with Kareem Huggins having shown so well that the Bucs felt comfortable releasing high priced free agent Derrick Ward, its not likely that Smith will have a role on offense.

So how do you choose between two guys that maybe you don't really need? Easy if you're the Bucs, you don't. They instead kept both guys on the active roster for now.

Then you have the Safety conundrum. For all of last year we kept only 3 Safeties on our active roster at any given time during the season. This preseason we had our Strong Safety, Sabby Piscitelli, lose his job to Sean Jones. We also had a holdover from last season, Cory Lynch, again show up on special teams and he also played well when he got reps on defense. And we had a rookie seventh round pick who did so well in the OTA's that he was moved up to 2nd string and he showed with his play in the preseason games that he was deserving of that status. But again we only carried 3 safeties last year and Tanard Jackson as well as Jones are now our starters. So how do you pick one guy or even two guys out of that group of three? Easy if you're the Bucs. You keep them all!

Yaaaayyyy.

But here's the thing, in order to keep everybody at positions where there were hard choices you end up cutting someone at another position where maybe people won't notice as hard of a decision. Now the fact that we are carrying 6 linebackers instead of the 7 we carried last year may not be that big of a deal. I think we probably would be better off with 7, but hey I can live with 6.

However carrying only 8 offensive linemen seems like a recipe for disaster to me. And its not just that we are only carrying 8, but to be more specifically that we cut the only guy who showed he was a viable option should Jeff Faine get hurt again. You DO remember what that looked like last season right? Having to sign a walking turnstile off the street so he could come in and damn near get two of our three quarterbacks hurt wasn't really any fun to watch. But here we are a season later and we are supposed to rely on Jeremy Zuttah at center should an emergency arise?

Ok I have a suggestion for you, go back and watch the Dolphins game. All those plays in the backfield by Miami's nosetackles? Yeah, check out who was at center.

Donovan Raiola had a very good preseason in my opinion and he should be that ninth offensive lineman. I don't care whether he can play guard or not, we need somebody who can actually play worth a damn at center backing up Faine and as of right now we don't have anybody and you can quote me on that.

But hey at least we got to keep all the running backs and all the safeties. I mean surely it will be worth it in the end...

Right?


As for the guys I was actually wrong on, I really thought Ryan Purvis had the lead on John Gilmore because of his versatility. I guess they disagree. As for Demar Dotson I really hadn't the faintest clue he was hurt enough to be on IR.