Gruden's act gets as old as Bucs' losing ways - John Stinky Romano

[Orangegone1]

Look, bottom line is that there has been $$$$. It is all in how we've allocated it. We've seen that given structures on Brees' contract we could have made a play for him. We didn't. Heck, we spent $$$$ on Hovan that we could have devoted to Brees. Anyone think Brees > Hovan? Yeah, thought so. We didn't go after any FA QB's not out of money problems but out of Simms being "the man". That isn't a cap problem, it is a player evaluation problem.

Jones wanted to be the feature and our hestitation to make him the feature was......Pittman? Really? No, you are kidding me right? Oh, no you aren't. The decision on Jones becomes a cascading problem because we then had to go use a high pick on Caddy instead of on Merriman or Ware, for example. Each decision is a ripple that causes other problems.

We sign Steussie and Deese to deals that are the same as what Jeno James gets. James is a solid younger OG down in MIA right now, not getting him means that the OG psiotions stays in flux and we burn the R1 on Davin and miss on McNeil, Mangold for you C lovers, Kiwi and others. When you make a mistake the problem is how you have to make another move to fix that same mistake (see Harper, Emmauel, Green, Reidel, KJ as a great example of continuing failures).

The cap is an excuse becuase while we didn't have the jack for the most expensive players in the game the way we did use the jack we had was often rock dumb and the implications of those decisions continues into the problems we have today.

You're right dalbuc. The Bucs could have probably made a run at Brees by not re-signing Chris Hovan, Mike Alstott, Derrick Brooks and Matt Bryant - all of which played a huge role in an 11-5 NFC South championship season. So you've got a QB who is coming off shoulder surgery and gaping holes at DT, FB, LB and K to worry about and no cap room left to do it. That's called addition by substraction.

Sorry, you can't equate Hovan and Brees. Brees got an $8 million signing bonus, and has a $12 million option bonus due in 2007, along with a $2 million base salary this year with a cap value of close to $4 million. They could have made a run at him, but it would have come at the expense of other players. Hovan has a $2 million cap value in 2006. He got a $3 million signing bonus and had a base of $1.4 million.

The first factor was money, but it also came down to whether the Bucs wanted a promising Simms as their QB or to take a chance on alienating him by signing a guy who was coming off shoulder surgery.

Exactly

Give fans and all other 31 teams our off-season plan...BRILLIANT

[karen anderson]

It's not the CIA, RJ, & I didn't mean word for word.

Still yet, I'd rather be in the dark than even hinting at stuff...saying 'We need to get better on the lines' is okay, but saying 'we'll address this in FA' ...no so much.

[alldaway]

Gruden's reputation came from generating offense from other people's cast offs.  A decent but not special guy in Gannon, a bust of a RB in Wheately, a bust LT in Kennedy, even a guy like Rice who was thought to be finished. 

The point is that we weren't supposed to require elite high cost talent with a guy like Gruden.  He is supposed to be the type of coach who can get more from a player than an average coach.  On offense, we aren't seeing that kind of up coaching that made Gruden in the first place. 

Exactly.

[dalbuc]

It is, but as SR has said many times, they don't present the full item, only the Gruden side, they never mention the hell that McKay caused here, it's always 'Dungy's team', I can go on, but the hints are there, they either dislike Jon, or love their McKay.

No one blames regimes that are years gone for problems that  a current regime has after a year. Yeah the last guys screwed up but that excuse only last a year. Heck, I bet Marinelli isn't even getting that in DET for example and Millen is STILL there screwing it up. Everyone inherits contracts.  Everyone has injuries, people act like the Bucs are the only team that has issues.

We live in some magic bubble where NE didn't lose their two best WR's in FA/contract issues, they don't have 3 of their top 4 DB's hurt, they didn't lose their NT, didn't lose all their top assistants in the last 2 years and so on.
Dallas didn't turn to a veteran new starter at QB and have him perform well. They didn't start Jason Fabini and Marco Columbo (two guys we didn't want) on their line this week.
TEN hasn't found a way to win with a rookie QB, the loss of their top 2 WR's to injury for a lot of season along with their top 2 RB's while cutting their fracnhise QB and LOT in the off-season.
JAX is playing down 2 DE's most of the year, 1 DT's a lot of the time, their strating MLB, starting QB, their WR's stink on ice but they're in it.

We have issues but nope, no one else does.

[DanTurksGhost]

No one blames regimes that are years gone for problems that  a current regime has after a year.

What a gigantic load.

[dalbuc]

No one blames regimes that are years gone for problems that  a current regime has after a year.

What a gigantic load.

Correction, no one but fans on this board and the people who run it blame regimes that are years gone....you are correct Dan, I should not have made such a bold faced lie.

[DanTurksGhost]

Correction, no one but fans on this board and the people who run it blame regimes that are years gone....you are correct Dan, I should not have made such a bold faced lie.

Yes, you are correct, it is a lie. Not sure why you would post such a false statement, unless you've never spent any time in any other NFL city or spent any time at all interfacing with fans, media and NFL personnel from other major markets. If you had, you'd know it happens everywhere.

[keeponbucn]

No one blames regimes that are years gone for problems that a current regime has after a year.

What a gigantic load.

Correction, no one but fans on this board and the people who run it blame regimes that are years gone....you are correct Dan, I should not have made such a bold faced lie.

Are you saying this FO didn't inherit problems that have lasted for years?

Dal, nobody on here wants to talk about other teams, we talk Bucs. I get your side of this but damn these are VALID reasons.

[DanTurksGhost]

Are you saying this FO didn't inherit problems that have lasted for years?

These arguments are not unique to Tampa, despite Dal's attempt to claim otherwise. Hell, less than 10 seconds on Google yielded a result showing someone saying the exact same thing about the Lions a couple of years back. Read this and prepare for a case of "deja vu":

http://www.thelionsfanatics.com/insider_news_64.html

[dalbuc]

Are you saying this FO didn't inherit problems that have lasted for years?

Dal, nobody on here wants to talk about other teams, we talk Bucs. I get your side of this but damn these are VALID reasons.

Whatever problems they inherited they also inherted some gifts - again decry McF's contract but BK and Ronde are way under their market value for example.

They have had limited cap room, not "hell"ish more of a purgatory-ish type. While those have prevented them from going on a free agent bonanza what they have done with those FA $$$$ is still a cause of concern. The quick, but they had to shop in the $0.99 store excuse only works if you assume, in some cases, you HAD to sign anyone. We all know the disasterous FA class of Deese, Steussie and the lot would have been better with nothing. We know that the combined $$$$ devoted to those players could have helped elsewhere by signing just one decent player. We've seen that decision on using $$$$ on Hovan had an effect elsewhere in terms of what the team could do because they were more oncerend with keeping the "11-5" team together and mistaking how good it or they were. I don't grade them down for not signing Super-Star X becuase they didn't have the jack for them but I do hold against them the decisions they've made on how to allocate the funds they did have.

Goes back to the core of my argument, i don't expect, given the limits, this to be the best offense in the league but the worst, or among the worst? To have been consistently as bad as Tony's criminally clownish offenses despite having more talent over 5 years? That's hard to fathom. Dungy's offenses were bad but the team never bottomed out twice in three years like Gruden has. We saw from my post yeserday that, in general, the really good coaches don't let their teams crater the whole way. You look at injury ravaged teams like CAR or PIT this year and they've held it together in some fashion. Neither are playoff teams but neither are they disagraces like we are.

[keeponbucn]

Are you saying this FO didn't inherit problems that have lasted for years?

Dal, nobody on here wants to talk about other teams, we talk Bucs. I get your side of this but damn these are VALID reasons.

Whatever problems they inherited they also inherted some gifts - again decry McF's contract but BK and Ronde are way under their market value for example.

They have had limited cap room, not "hell"ish more of a purgatory-ish type. While those have prevented them from going on a free agent bonanza what they have done with those FA $$$$ is still a cause of concern. The quick, but they had to shop in the $0.99 store excuse only works if you assume, in some cases, you HAD to sign anyone. We all know the disasterous FA class of Deese, Steussie and the lot would have been better with nothing. We know that the combined $$$$ devoted to those players could have helped elsewhere by signing just one decent player. We've seen that decision on using $$$$ on Hovan had an effect elsewhere in terms of what the team could do because they were more oncerend with keeping the "11-5" team together and mistaking how good it or they were. I don't grade them down for not signing Super-Star X becuase they didn't have the jack for them but I do hold against them the decisions they've made on how to allocate the funds they did have.

Goes back to the core of my argument, i don't expect, given the limits, this to be the best offense in the league but the worst, or among the worst? To have been consistently as bad as Tony's criminally clownish offenses despite having more talent over 5 years? That's hard to fathom. Dungy's offenses were bad but the team never bottomed out twice in three years like Gruden has. We saw from my post yeserday that, in general, the really good coaches don't let their teams crater the whole way. You look at injury ravaged teams like CAR or PIT this year and they've held it together in some fashion. Neither are playoff teams but neither are they disagraces like we are.

Good stuff, can't argue with most of that. I agree that FA class was atrocious. What's a more disturbing trend that I have with the coaches is they aquire an OL player but then move them to the opposite position they're used to playing, ala Stussie. He's playing pretty damn well in St Louis, at least he's not the trunstyle we thought he was. Why move a player from their natural position? It doesn't make sense and rarely works out.

You have to give and take, I'm with that. You can't castrate Gruden for the poor offense this year because the plays were there to be made. Was it a mistake to play Grads as much? In hindsight yes it was but he earned that 2nd spot, not Rattay. Grads regression, as most rookie QB, is the main reason for the atrocious offensive numbers this year. The plays have been there and showed when at least a capable QB comes in and hits the throws.