Did You Hear? Tampa Bay Has A Lot Of Quarterbacks.

The Buccaneers have brought in some valuable veteran talent on both sides of the ball (Kevin Carter, Luke Petitgout, Cato June), drafted defense with seven of ten picks and have a coach that just about everybody is saying is on the hot seat, but all anyone can talk about is the number of quarterbacks on the roster. Oh, they're real joksters, these guys. Don Banks, for example...

Like Scarlett O'Hara vowing to never go hungry again as the wreckage of Tara looms behind her, Bucs coach Jon Gruden emerged from 2006 determined to never again be forced into quarterback deprivation. That might explain why Tampa Bay has an NFL-high seven quarterbacks currently on its roster. Seven. Are there even that many seats in the Bucs' quarterbacks meeting room?

Seven is a lot, but it's not like they're all there or anything. Jake Plummer is in quasi-retirement and as far as anyone knows has yet to set foot in Tampa and Bruce Eugene is playing in Europe, nearly guaranteeing that he won't last with the Bucs. That leaves five, one more than most teams take to camp, and even though Zac Taylor is a nice story, is he going to beat out Luke McCown or Bruce Gradkowski for reps? Hell and no.

But at least Banks adds real analysis to his hysterical commentary, saying that the team will be better off with Chris Simms in the long run (I agree... I'm sure that puts his mind at ease.) ESPN.com decided to just go with the joke in their Power Rankings.

How many QBs does a team need? Jeff Garcia, Chris Simms, Bruce Gradkowski, Luke McCown and, just for fun, maybe Jake Plummer. Clipboards for everybody!

That's it. This isn't an amateur blog site... it's one of the premier sources for sports news in the country. I guess the fact that the rankings didn't include an author credit (pussies) should have tipped me off that they were phoning it in on this one. And rankings in May? Is anything more useless? Besides this article, I mean.

Anyway, it would be nice if the national media could talk about something besides an extra quarterback on the roster. This team has a lot of interesting storylines this season. Try looking into them.