Give me the homer pick. 11 wins. Baker plays better than last year.
We stay healthy. Key young players on defense contribute.
Run game improves.
Bucs get some respect.
Did I win anything for being optimistic about Baker from the get go?
The healthy part... Not so much.
I get the feeling I'm missing an inside joke. Which is cool. Eventually I'll probably figure it out.
Sorry I was joking about the fine line between your 12 win scenario (great read) and in this thread the marker for a failed season which was anything below 10 wins and a deep playoff run.
I am hoping you are right. And I agree it’s not unreasonable. Sort of what makes it great to watch. A break or two either direction can really change a season
No worries.
I didn't see the bit about a 10 W season being a 'failure,' but I mean with the new playoff set up where 7 teams in each Conference get to play for the right to go to the SB, a 10 W season basically gets you in, so I do's see how that would be a failure. Maybe it's me or I'm missing something.
I really think 11 Ws is a strong possibility; Baker managed to scrape up 9 Ws (10 if we include playoffs) in an offense that featured the league's least efficient run game and was apparently 28th or 29th using pre-snap motion. And Baker was supposed to be a PA QB only (lol at that) that required a strong run game to succeed at all, similar to Ryan Tannehill. Well, he proved that wrong, in spades. And you can check the gamelogs; in games where Rashaad White managed to average at least 3.7 yds/att (well below league average, but that was just enough), Baker played fairly well, and TB won nearly all of those games, iirc. Without the benefit of pre-snap motion and without being able to call audibles.
Coen's offense, that should put TB up in the top-10 in terms of pre-snap motion (LAR averaged ps motion about 75% of plays) and somewhere better than 20th in rushing, should give Baker enough breathing room to improve upon his performance last year. Sure, there will be some clunky games; comes with a new offense/new OC. And a lot depends on how quickly and smartly Coen and Baker make adjustments when things bog down. But I really think they'll be mostly ironed out by Week 10 or so.
Main thing is, Baker can't get seriously injured. The OL will probably have a few snafus early on while they get used to each other's strengths/weaknesses, and Baker will have to navigate those without getting hurt or consistently giving up negative plays. They have to win the games they should win, like vs. WAS/DEN/NYG/CAR/LVR. They need to win about half their 50-50 games (DET/PHI/ATL/DAL/LAC). And hopefully squeak out a W r two vs. the teams they aren't supposed to beat.
Simple. lol.
Heh. Not too shabby, all things considered.
Good calls. I hade everything basically wrong except for the injuries part, unfortunately
@bucsbits - not me at 8 and 9.
Yep pretty spot on. Maybe you expect a little less from the offense then we got (pre-injuries) but called many things right
our schedule/matchups
upcoming defensive downfall
we will have 3 or 4 non-division games that we will be huge dogs in.
we go as far as our offense can take us this year
Lots of good takes in here. Kermit calls the better O-Line play. A couple people mention injuries as a wildcard
Lots of good takes . . .
and some hardcore trolling LMAO
wouldn't be the RB without it
Thanks for the acknowledgement.
