Oh Yeah, T.O. Would Have Been Perfect

Ugh, I was going to ignore this steaming pile from John Romano, but I kept thinking about the picture he used as the teaser: Terrell Owens in his Jesus Christ pose, having just scored on the Bucs. And it just gnawed at me.

His whole thing is (AGAIN) that the Glazers aren’t spending enough money to buy a Super Bowl. Remember, he did this less than three months ago when Jason La Canfora’s report came out about team spending over the last five years. My response is here, and I’ll try not to repeat too many of the same points. But it’s sad that Romano has to use the team’s recent losses to continue to cram his agenda of Buccaneer hate down our throats.

The Bucs went from spending more than most teams on player payroll to spending less than every team. And not just for one season. Based on reports, the Bucs have been the cheapest team in the NFL since 2004, which is around the time soccer became a family business.

We already covered all this.

So before you skewer Raheem Morris, you may want to consider the circumstances he has been given. Before you blame Mark Dominik, you may want to ask yourself how much of this is beyond his control.

Rational people aren’t “skewering” anyone yet because we’re only TWO GAMES IN. Just like everyone we talked about yesterday, Romano thinks it’s the end of the world because the team isn’t winning right out of the gate despite having a completely new coaching staff, offensive and defensive scheme.

The next two paragraphs are about how much money the team isn’t spending and what they could get for that money. You don’t mind if I skip them, right?

As much as you might want to start with a new quarterback, the truth is the Bucs have tied themselves to Josh Freeman’s future. So we’ll accept Byron Leftwich as a temporary caretaker. And, besides, there are plenty of other areas that need upgrading.

Quarterback is where he’s going to stand pat? Even with Freeman being the future, I can think of other quarterbacks I’d like for him to learn from more than Leftwich. Watching Leftwich perform is not exactly like receiving a crash course in quarterbacking fundamentals.

Greg Ellis was available fairly cheap. Sure, he’s 34, but he also has had 20.5 sacks the past two seasons. Right on cue, he has three sacks in two games with the Raiders. And all for a reported $10 million over three years. Bertrand Berry is another 34-year-old working cheap. He has two sacks in two games on a one-year, $1 million deal.

By saying all this, Romano is implicitly skewering Morris himself. The whole idea of this season was to have a youth movement. You find young players that you think have potential, throw them in the water and see if they can swim. That was the purpose of the veteran purge. What would the fans have said if the team had cut Derrick Brooks and Warrick Dunn but brought on a couple other old guys? Hell, they could have just kept Kevin Carter if they were interested in old defensive ends. They’re not. Despite it being explained by various leaders from the Buccaneers, Romano obviously does not get what their plan is. Young players are cheaper than old players. When they figure out who they want to keep, they’ll pay them more.

As for interior linemen, the Bucs let Jovan Haye go because he was supposedly too small for Jim Bates’ new scheme. You may recall the run defense went into the tank last season when Haye got hurt, and it has yet to recover. Haye signed in Tennessee for $16.2 million over four years. And if you’re insistent on a bigger defensive tackle, 330-pound Colin Cole signed in Seattle for $21.4 million over five years.

Romano’s on crack if he thinks that Haye and Cole are better than the Ryan Sims, Chris Hovan, Roy Miller combo platter.

If Romano was being fair or impartial in any way, this is the part of his article where he would mention that the Bucs offered Albert Haynesworth more money than Washington did to try and land him at the beginning of free agency. But he didn’t. The word “Haynesworth” does not appear in his article at all. Haynesworth did not want to come to Tampa despite the extra money. You can’t spend money on something that isn’t available to you.

With Quincy Black, Geno Hayes, Sabby Piscitelli and Aqib Talib, the Bucs have four new starters at linebacker and defensive back. I understand the need for new blood, but the Bucs could have gone after a better blend. At 32, linebacker Mike Peterson still has good days left, and Atlanta got him for $6.5 million over two years. He has one interception, two passes defensed and 16 tackles.

For what purpose would you bring in Peterson? He is a middle linebacker by trade and the Bucs already have a franchise middle linebacker. Why bring a 32-year old linebacker to switch positions when you could just go with young guys who have already trained at those spots. I will grant that switching Peterson to a WLB makes more sense than switching Jermaine Phillips to WLB, but it didn’t work out that way anyway. And, to reiterate, if the Bucs had brought in a 32-year old linebacker to play WLB when they had just cut Derrick Brooks, there would have been a mutiny in Tampa.

The offensive line is promising, and the Bucs upgraded at running back and tight end. Still, it would have been nice to have another receiving threat. They were available, and they weren’t expensive. Jabar Gaffney ended up in Denver ($10 million for four years), Devery Henderson remained in New Orleans ($12 million for four years), Nate Washington went to Tennessee ($27 million for six years) and even Terrell Owens was a relative bargain in Buffalo (one year at $6.5 million).

And this is where I went insane.

He’s really lamenting the loss of Jabar Gaffney?!? That’s fucking sad. The Bucs made Henderson an offer and he decided to stay in New Orleans. Washington hasn’t helped the Titans win any games yet with his 44 yards so far. And then there’s Owens. Can you even comprehend the shitstorm that would have been wrought on the Buccaneers by bringing a volatile personality like Owens into a locker room that had just been picked clean of strong leadership? Morris, more than anything, wants to build team chemistry. And for all his physical talents, Owens is not a team guy. He’ll block, he’ll catch across the middle, he’ll do the dirty work — but in the end if he’s not catching touchdowns, you’re fucked.

Oh what would the Tampa papers have said if the Bucs had released Brooks and signed a 35-year old Owens to their youth movement? Romano would have been in a race with the rest of the Bucs beat writers to see who could eviscerate Morris, Dominik and the Glazers first and with the most melodrama. It would have been a media bloodbath and Romano would have provided the Luffa. For him to say otherwise is insincere at best.

Dominik says — much like Bruce Allen before him — that the Bucs need cap space so they can tie up core players. Except they rarely do that. Barrett Ruud is their best player on defense, and he’s annoyed because he doesn’t have a long-term deal. Antonio Bryant was the team MVP, and he’s ticked because he’s on a one-year deal.

This is the only part of his story that has merit. The team should be locking up good, young players so they don’t hit free agency. We have speculated why they haven’t on here before and one obvious possibility is that the Glazers are, in fact, being cheap. We have no way of knowing, and neither does Romano. But if he had wanted to investigate that topic further and lay out his reasons, I wouldn’t have commented on it because it’s a valid concern. But not signing old and/or crap players for big money just because the Glazers have money to spend? That’s smart business that is in line with the goals of the coaching staff to develop a team from the ground up.