FAB 5. SR’s Buc Shots

• Birthday wishes to Bucs wide receiver Mike Evans, who turned 26 this week on August 21. Evans, Tampa Bay’s first-round pick in 2014, has a chance to tie an NFL record this year with one more 1,000-yard season. Evans is currently tied with Cincinnati’s A.J. Green for second place in league history with five consecutive years of 1,000-yard seasons to start his NFL career.

Hall of Famer Randy Moss holds the current record with six straight 1,000-yard seasons from 1998-2003. Green’s streak was halted at five years after he posted 964 yards in 10 games during the 2016 season, but Evans has a shot to tie Moss this year with one more 1,000-yard season, and then set the new NFL mark with yet another 1,000-yard season in 2020. Achieving that distinction would only bolster Evans’ chances of making the Hall of Fame as the first offensive player in Bucs history to be enshrined in Canton.

Is Mike Evans a top 3 receiver? 🧐 @MikeEvans13_ @Buccaneers pic.twitter.com/IRgF3ATylG

— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) May 30, 2019

• If things don’t work out with Jameis Winston this year, the Bucs will move on in 2020 with a new quarterback, likely with a Top 10 pick once again as a result of Winston struggling. Nobody wants to see that happen, especially the folks at the AdventHealth Training Center.

Tampa Bay scouts quarterbacks every year just in case there is a need to draft one due to a suspension or a severe injury to their starter, and this season will be no different, especially with Winston in a critical contract year. The 2020 crop of QBs looks to be quite talented with headliners Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa (junior), Oregon’s Justin Herbert (senior) and Georgia’s Jake Fromm (junior) as potential first-round picks. There are also some well-known second-tier QBs, such as Iowa’s Nate Stanley (senior), Washington’s Jacob Eason (junior) and LSU’s Joe Burrow (senior), and a really under-the-radar talent in Utah’s Jordan Love (junior).

The 6-foot-4, 220-pound Love started some games as a redshirt freshman, completing 54.9 percent of his passes for 1,631 yards with eight touchdowns and six interceptions before a stellar sophomore year that saw him complete 64 percent of his throws for 3,567 yards with 32 TDs and just 6 INTs while leading the Aggies to an 11-2 record last year. Utah State’s only losses were to No. 23 Boise State, 33-24, and No. 11 Michigan State, 38-31.

Love is Daniel Jeremiah’s No. 3 QB heading into the 2019 college football season ahead of Fromm, as more and more draft media members are starting to take note. The Bucs also think highly of him, too. Keep an eye on Love this year and watch his draft stock rise.

• A NEW PRESEASON PEWTER NATION PODCAST! The Pewter Reporters were back this week with another Pewter Nation Podcast analyzing the contract extension of Tampa Bay general manager Jason Licht and looking at the players on the bubble ahead of the team’s preseason game against Cleveland. Make sure you listen to this one before kickoff.

Click here to listen to Pewter Nation Podcast Episode 139: To Play Or Not To Play

Bucs K Matt Gay – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Mark Cook, Trevor Sikkema and I also had a post-game podcast following Matt Gay’s 48-yard game-winner to beat the visiting Miami Dolphins in the Bucs’ second preseason game. This was a really good podcast with plenty of instant analysis.

Click here to listen to Pewter Nation Podcast 138: Folks, The Bucs Got A Kicker

You might have heard that Bucs legendary defensive tackle, Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion Warren Sapp joined the Pewter Nation Podcast this week. Sapp’s critical remarks of former Bucs defensive tackle Gerald McCoy made national news as the story was picked up by ESPN, Pro Football Talk, Bleacher Report and other national media outlets.

See what all the fuss was about and listen as Sapp also talks about the Bucs’ glory days, Ronde Barber, Vita Vea, Ndamukong Suh and Todd Bowles’ defense in

Click here to listen to Pewter Nation Podcast Episode 137: Sapp Uncensored

There is no better time to listen to a new Pewter Nation Podcast, which is presented by Chris Garrido of Westshore Financial, than on your drive home from work on Friday or running around doing errands or at the gym on Saturday. The next Pewter Nation Podcast will be taped immediately after the Bucs vs. Browns preseason game.

The popularity of the Pewter Nation Podcast continues to grow. In addition to listening to the Pewter Nation Podcasts on PewterReport.com you can also subscribe to the free podcasts at PodBean by clicking here and on SoundCloud by clicking here. And of course the Pewter Nation Podcast is also available on iTunes. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode.

• There is some similarity to the stories of Bucs wide receivers Breshad Perriman and Emanuel Hall. Both were big, blazing fast receivers coming out of college. Both had marquee quarterbacks throwing them the ball in Blake Bortles for Perriman and Drew Lock for Hall.

Both also dealt with injuries and dropped passes in college, too. Yet Perriman was healthier coming out of UCF than Hall was coming out of Missouri, where he suffered through a season-long groin injury last year.

Bucs WR Emanuel Hall – Photo by Getty Images

“I actually don’t know a lot about Perriman’s story, but I will say there was a lot of things pre-draft that I went through and maybe he did, too – like in college I did have some, especially my junior year I had a ton of drops,” Hall said. “That was my first time starting. As an athlete, you’re not perfect. You’re going to have some drops. I think for me, some things were blown way out of proportion way more than they actually were because I know guys that dropped balls a ton and the media doesn’t talk about it. They were like, ‘Okay, they called a bunch of deep balls all the time, and he catches most of them, but that’s all he can do.’ But that’s how the offense ran at Missouri. It’s not that we couldn’t run routes, that’s just what the offense was. There are guys in the league that are fast, and guess what they do? They run a bunch of deep ball routes, so it’s like there’s nothing wrong with that. And it also doesn’t mean that I can’t run routes. I just wasn’t asked to do it a whole lot.

“As far as the hands, there’s no way in the SEC that you can have almost 900 yards two years straight and 16 touchdowns and not have good hands and not run good routes. Because if you’re just running straight, anybody can do that. You know how many fast people there are in the world? A lot. I just haven’t had a chance to show what I can do. In Chicago I wasn’t allowed to practice that much because I had the injury, so these are really some of my first full practices. That’s one thing that I’m excited to just go out there and show my first preseason game and in the second preseason game – that I can play at this level and that I am a pretty well-rounded dude.”

Here is PewterReport.com’s preseason schedule on WDAE:

Friday, August 23 – Scott Reynolds (3:30pm)
Monday, August 26 – Mark Cook (8:10am)
Friday, August 30 – Mark Cook (3:30pm)

Weekly regular season appearances twice a day on Mondays and Fridays with Scott Reynolds and Mark Cook, and a two-segment show with Trevor Sikkema on Wednesday mornings begin in September on WDAE 95.3 FM – stay tuned! Sikkema also will appear on WDAE 95.3’s Insiders show with host Pat Donovan, Tampa Bay Times Bucs beat writer Rick Stroud and ESPN’s Bucs beat writer Jenna Laine at 9:00 a.m. on Sundays prior to each Bucs game.

• PEWTER REPORT IS NEARING 33,000 FOLLOWERS ON TWITTER! The PR Twitter account continues to grow by leaps and bounds and there are some big reasons why. We cover Bucs practices, Bucs press conferences and break news on our @PewterReport Twitter account. So if you aren’t one of the almost 33,000 Bucs fans that follow PewterReport.com on Twitter please do so right now so you don’t miss out on Bucs game coverage, press conference notes and video, injury updates, breaking news and notifications about the latest stories and columns on PewterReport.com. Follow us today!

• New Bucs head coach Bruce Arians made a habit of saying that “the stars aligned” with him coming out of retirement to coach in Tampa Bay because all of his former assistant coaches, including coordinators Todd Bowles, Harold Goodwin and Byron Leftwich, were all available. But the stars also aligned in a different way for Arians.

It just so happens that during Arians’ first season in Tampa Bay he will play four of the teams in which he has served as a play-caller, either as an offensive coordinator or a head coach. In his first preseason game with the Bucs, Arians traveled to Pittsburgh where he spent eight years from 2004-11 as a wide receivers coach and then offensive coordinator.

Bucs head coach Bruce Arians – Photo by: Getty Images

On Friday, Arians plays Cleveland where he became an offensive coordinator for the first time in the NFL from 2001-03 before moving on to Pittsburgh. In the regular season, Arians and the Bucs will host both Arizona and Indianapolis.

Arians was the Colts quarterbacks coach where he oversaw Peyton Manning’s development from 1998-2000, and then returned in 2012 as the offensive coordinator in Andrew Luck’s rookie year and took over as the interim head coach for Chuck Pagano when he had leukemia. Arians was named the NFL Head Coach of the Year in 2012, which led him to get the Cardinals head coaching job in 2013, a title he held until 2017 when he retired.

“I never like going against those guys – it’s okay in the preseason because it doesn’t really matter,” Arians said. “But I never have any fun in winning those games, but still I want to win. It is kind of odd – really odd – to have all four of them at once in this season.”

The Bucs players know that these games are meaningful to their new head coach, and despite losing the preseason opener at Pittsburgh, they plan on winning the rest of the games on the Arians Reunion Tour.

“I’m sure he wants all those games,” said Bucs inside linebacker Kevin Minter. “At the end of the day, you want to win every game. Obviously, it’s his former team and you want to make a statement with those games. We’ve got to show out and prove it for him.”

• Attention Tampa Bay area anglers! Our great partners at Tampa Fishing Outfitters are having a FREE Grouper Seminar on Wednesday, August 28 from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. at their location at 3916 W. Osbourne Avenue in Tampa. The good news is that it’s the day before the Bucs’ preseason finale at Dallas, so you can learn all about grouper fishing on Wednesday night and then watch some football on Thursday night.

Tampa Fishing Outfitters has the best and largest selection for all of your freshwater and saltwater angling needs from rods, reels, bait, lures, tackle boxes, rod carriers and much, much more. If you haven’t been by Tampa Fishing Outfitters yet, stop by and say hello to owner Joy Lee and let her and her friendly and knowledgeable staff help you find the right equipment to make your next fishing trip a huge success. Visit Tampa Fishing Outfitters online at TampaFishingOutfitters.com and when you visit, make sure to tell them that PewterReport.com sent you.