With OTA practices being non-contact, meaning not a lot of real football going on, the unfortunate talk of the town last month wasn’t about who was at Buccaneers OTAs, but more who wasn’t, specifically Bucs’ new pass rusher Jason Pierre-Paul.

The Bucs traded for Pierre-Paul back on March 22nd, and since his introductory press conference, there hasn’t been more contact or sight of him at all with the Buccaneers. With it being the offseason, that’s obviously to be expected. But, when OTA practices rolled around and Pierre-Paul still wasn’t in uniform, that’s when some questions began to come up.

The main question was simply: why? Why didn’t Pierre-Paul want to show up as soon as he could to start building chemistry with his new team right away? When he did address the media for the first time since his press conference after the first mandatory mini-camp practice, this is what he had to say when he was asked why he wasn’t in Tampa sooner.

“A lot of moving around, bringing my stuff from Jersey, making sure my son’s situated – that’s basically it,” Pierre-Paul said.

I don’t think anyone was questioning that part of his migration down to Tampa. Those are perfectly fine reasons, and, after all, the OTA practices are voluntary.

But, last week after the final mini-camp practice head coach Dirk Koetter was asked about JPP’s timing coming to Tampa and gave another adequate answer, but a different one.

“When JPP first told me he wasn’t going to be at the first part of OTAs, he said, ‘Coach, I’ve been doing this a long time, there’s only so many things a defensive end has to do,” Koeter said.

That one seems more accurate, if you ask me. Sure, it takes time to move families from one city to the other when you sign elsewhere or get traded. But, plenty of the Bucs’ other new free agents as well as free agents all over the league do that and still get there for OTAs. Instead, from what Koetter said, Pierre-Paul had a little bit of a “been there done that” attitude. Plus, Pierre-Paul knows what the Florida heat is like and probably wasn’t exactly thrilled about an extra month of the sunny abuse, if he didn’t have to — he is a vet, after all, a right you could say he’s well earned.

When JPP was in uniform, however, Koetter was already impressed.

“I think he’s done a good job.” Koetter said. “You can tell – we all know who he is from afar but when he gets here, he’s a big man and he’s long, 280 pounds. He plays the run a lot better than people think he does so, he’s going to be fine.”

No matter the reason, Pierre-Paul is in Tampa Bay now. We’ve already heard that he and Lavonte David are getting their chemistry back form their junior college days, but Gerald McCoy also says there’s plenty of work to be done all across the team with the new guys and improving on a disappointing season.