Whooooosh!

That was the sound of the air being let out of the Bucs’ balloon late on Sunday evening after another rain-relayed disappointing loss.

All of the excitement that fans and the organization felt after Tampa Bay’s opening-season road win at Atlanta is gone.

Part of the air left in Arizona when Doug Martin, Robert Ayers and Luke Stocker all limped back to the bus following a 40-7 beat down at the hands of the Cardinals in Week 2.

More air left last week when quarterback Jameis Winston went 1-of-6 down the stretch in a comeback bid against the Rams.

Any remaining air left following the team’s third straight loss, a 27-7 beat down at the hands of the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos last Sunday.

Where are the problems for the Bucs? A better question is where aren’t the problems for this football team?

No question injuries haven’t helped things.

Losing Jacquies Smith in Week 1 at Atlanta took the team’s second-leading sacker out of the equation for the whole season. A week later Ayers goes down, a player who had 9.5 sacks in 2015 and was counted on to duplicate those numbers for the Buccaneers, injures an ankle and things got worse.

Then on Sunday the team lost its best pass rusher in Gerald McCoy, plus 2016 second-round draft pick Noah Spence and all of a sudden fans are grabbing the nearest roster to look up jersey numbers and try and figure out who is even on the field.

And for a team that is led by an offensive coach in Dirk Koetter, things are just as bad – and that’s where the most optimism was heading into the season.

Losing Stocker, the best blocking tight end, and losing last season’s NFL second-leading rusher in Martin can’t be underestimated. It literally takes away several pages from Koetter’s play-action playbook, and completely affects his personnel packages, the team’s blocking schemes not to mention the damaging effect it has on the overall psyche of this young Bucs team.

Whooooosh!

The fact is, for the Bucs to compete for a playoff spot this year they needed a lot of things to go right.

No major injuries.

Bounces to go their way.

Calls to go their way.

Kicks to clank off the upright but still sneak inside the goal post.

Potential interceptions skipping out of defenders hands and into the Mike Evans’ mitts for a touchdown.

All the things that happen to good teams en route to a winning season, and the Bucs needed them to happen. Through the first quarter of the season it has been the opposite, and it is no surprise Tampa Bay closed out the first four games with a 1-3 record.

The potential to bounce back is there. Tampa Bay will travel to take on a Carolina team that has its own issues, along with an identical 1-3 record through four games. This is also a Panthers team that has star quarterback Cam Newton in the NFL’s concussion protocol.

Cam Newton – Photo by: Getty Images

Following their Monday night match-up in Charlotte, the Bucs get a bye week. Most teams prefer it come at the halfway mark of the season, but it couldn’t come at a better time for Tampa Bay. Martin, Ayers, Stocker – and perhaps McCoy and Spence if they can’t go on Monday Night Football – could return when Tampa Bay gets back to playing football after the break and travels to take on the 49ers.

Now we’ll see what type of head coach Koetter is. Now we will see what type of coaching staff the Bucs have. Can Koetter out-scheme opposing defenses despite being undermanned? Can defensive coordinator Mike Smith manufacture a pass rush with players that most fans had never heard of two or three weeks ago?

Following the loss to the Rams, Koetter identified a “culture” issue within his team. Most likely he identified it last season. And looking back on it, it has been apparent the entire organization has had that same issue since the last four games of the 2008 season.

This football team, like many who have struggled to string wins together, just doesn’t go into football games feeling like they are going to win. Instead they hope they can win. The fans don’t walk into Raymond James Stadium feeling like their team is going to win. Instead they hope they can. They have confidence perhaps, but that supreme air of confidence that teams like the New England Patriots have just isn’t there as of now.

How does it happen? One win. Then another. And then another.

The air of confidence fills the balloon and it swells.

The Buccaneers’ balloon began to fill after Week 1, but the team didn’t handle its limited success well.

Whooooosh!

When the Bucs get their next win, it will be the first step. Will they add another one to it the following week, and then the next week? Time will tell.

But for now Koetter is chasing the deflating balloon as it flies all over the building wildly as the air continues to escape. Can he catch it, add some more air, and seal it up?

That is the challenge that he and this team faces on Monday night.