The Buccaneers are 2-0 on the season and sit atop the NFC South division standings, surprising many who expected the team to struggle early without quarterback Jameis Winston.

A player many expected to be a part of the team’s hoped turnaround was defensive end Noah Spence, who missed all but one game in 2017 with a shoulder injury. Despite the high hopes, Last week against the Saints Spence played just four snaps, and on Sunday Spence was inactive against the Eagles, causing a few raised eyebrows.

Bucs OC Dirk Koetter – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Head coach Dirk Koetter said don’t read too much into it during his day-after press conference on Monday from One Buc Place.

“That doesn’t mean we’re down on him, it doesn’t mean he regressed,” Koetter said. “We have 46 guys on game day and we got to get the 46 that we think gives us the best chance to win that game. Special teams has to factor into it. So if you have five defensive ends on game day, just like five wide receivers, I mean four and five have to play special teams. There’s just not enough guys if you do it that way.”

Spence doesn’t start on special teams and Koetter said that is part of the reason he wasn’t active on Sunday, but that Spence is putting in the work.

“He’s working extremely hard to work on things that we’ve asked him to work on,” Koetter said. “We’re not down on Noah. It’s not about not trying hard enough, not working hard enough, not caring hard enough,”

“He’s disappointed,” Koetter said. “He wants to play, he wants to help, he wants to be a part of it. That’s a good thing, that’s all good”.

Koetter even mentioned that Spence with him on Friday after getting the news he wouldn’t be active and said that was a positive.

“He came up and met with me one-on-one and we had a productive meeting,” Koetter said. “That’s a sign of maturity on his part to come up and look me in the eye and talk it out man to man. I appreciate that, we didn’t agree on everything but we got a plan in place to keep pushing things forward.”

As to what specifically was talked about in that meeting, Noah Spence himself gave insight into that.

“It’s not more of a football aspect of it, it’s more mental,” Spence said. “Just not be so much in my head. Coach was saying I put a lot of pressure on myself, and it makes me think too much sometimes.”

– Matt Matera contributed to this report