As someone posted VET players probably helped Bowles get the team through the down times this season. Some of those VET players apparently have HUGH CHIPS on their shoulders
Godwin recently:
“It wasn’t like the nucleus of the championship team wasn’t still here,” Godwin says. “It wasn’t like we didn’t have talented guys that worked their asses off. People were just writing us off from the beginning.
“Like we’ve been saying and preaching all year, last year, we came into the season, and people expected us to do a lot of things. You don’t win games on paper. You win them on the field. We just didn’t play well enough on the field last year. This year, same thing, but it flipped.
“People wrote us off in the beginning. We were like, That’s all right. We know the games are played on the field.”
Godwin is pretty soft spoken typically, but as JBF points out he is basically parroting a PRE-SEASON sentiment by Davis:
"Anybody who feels we’ve lost Tom — and lost something — is going to be in for a rude awakening. A rude awakening. Tom was a great addition for us, but obviously it’s a team sport. Obviously, you need components to be successful. We still have those components. And I’m only getting better.”
Bowles made similar comments about effort and dysfunction last year and of course "chip on shoulder" IS WHAT MAYFIELD IS ALL ABOUT.
Real or imagined, pretty powerful motivator
It's not just the Red Board . . players AND COACHES all talking about this year COMPARED TO LAST YEAR
This is Bowles:
“I’m sure [the Lions] feel like they have grit because they came on last year, and they came on to be very tough and they proved mentally tough this year,” Bowles said. “We got mentally tough this year. They probably got a year head start on us, but there’s some similarities that way [between the Lions and Bucs]. But we’re still two different teams.”