u/spideralex90

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Division: NFCS

2025 results: 8-9, 2nd in the NFCS, missed playoffs on a tiebreaker.

Notable Coaching/Front Office Departures:

Coach	Position	New Team	New Position
Josh Grizzard	Offensive Coordinator	Philadelphia Eagles	Pass Game Coordinator
Thomas McGaughey	Special Teams Coordinator	TBD	Not Hired Elsewhere Yet
Tom Moore	Senior Offensive Consultant	Iowa	Senior Offensive Consultant

This offseason we fired/parted ways/retired a lot of our coaching staff. Except Todd Bowles.

While we celebrated firing a lot of these coaches, it still remains a puzzling move to fire everyone for underperforming but keep the head coach that hired them all. We'll talk more about that in a bit.

Josh Grizzard was an internal promotion, given the tall task of emulating the offense Liam Coen built in 2024. Things looked pretty good for about 6 weeks, Baker was a hot early MVP candidate and the offense was putting up great numbers, often saving the ass of a defense who was allowing a lot of points. When injuries mounted and teams figured us out Grizz's gameplans fell apart fast. After starting 6-2 we would go on to only win 2 more games and finish the year 8-9 missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker to the also 8-9 Panthers.

Grizz and the rest of the coaching staff essentially became the scapegoat for the season. I personally don't think this season was completely on Grizz's bad offense, but I also don't think Grizz was remotely prepared to be an OC. Would not surprise me at all though if he becomes a good OC in the future after some more experience.

We fired Thomas McGaughey, arguably the worst Special Teams coach in the league. Last year our special teams was so bad Todd Bowles admitted in a press conference that they were kicking touchbacks because our kick coverage was so pitiful. Huge addition by subtraction. McGauhgey remains jobless right now.

Tom Moore retiring came as a surprise as I think many of us just expected Moore to coach until he physically could not. But apparently retirement did not suit him as 5 months later he was hired as the senior consultant and offensive advisor for Iowa. I wish he was still on our staff, but I've got nothing but respect for the legend.

Notable Coaching Hires:

Coach	Position	Old Team	New Position
Zac Robinson	Offensive Coordinator	Atlanta Falcons	Offensive Coordinator
Danny Smith	Special Teams Coordinator	Pittsburgh Steelers	Special Teams Coordinator
Todd Bowles Jr	Student	Dad's Couch	Defensive Assistant
Chandler Whitmer	Co-Offensive Coordinator/QB Coach	Indiana University	QB Coach

We looked at the Falcons 24th highest scoring offense last year and said 'well they nearly beat us early in the year, and then they completed a comeback against us so bad that Mike Evans left… so we obviously have to hire Zac'.

Falcons fans were ecstatic to hear of this hiring, and Bucs fans were very mixed on it. On the one hand Robinson was on our radar back in 2024 before we hired Coen because of the connection to Bakers time with the Rams and many of us were not excited at that time by the fact that he went to Atlanta. I personally can't imagine Robinson will be worse than Grizz but it also would not surprise anyone if he continues to trend in the wrong direction.

Easily the best hire of the offseason came with Danny Smith. Firing Thomas McGaughey on it's own could be seen as the best coaching move just from a pure addition by subtraction standpoint, but to cap that move off with hiring one of the best STC's in the league was a chefs kiss. Very excited to see how much our kick coverage improves. Won't be hard to impress after the dog water we've endured in that regard for a couple years now.

You read that next hire right. Now there are two of them! The Glazers looked at Todd Bowles and said, I wish we had more of him. And bam we hire Todd Bowles Jr. He'll very likely have a small role with the team, but this nepo hire will likely be looked at as another reason to fire Sr.

Chandler Whitmer is our new QB coach. Coming off a huge year coaching Fernando Mendoza to a championship. Not sure how much development he'll offer Baker in year 9, but not upset at the hire at all.

Players lost/cut

Player	Position	New Team
Michael Lynn Evans Jr	WR	San Francisco 49ers
Lavonte David	LB	Retired
Jamel Dean	CB	Pittsburgh Steelers
Teddy Bridgewater	QB	Detroit Lions
Logan Hall	DL	Houston Texans
Christian Izien	S	Detroit Lions
Rachaad White	RB	Washington Commanders
Haason Reddick	OLB	Free Agent
Greg gaines	DL	Free Agent
Kindle Vildor	CB	Free Agent
Anthony Walker	LB	Free Agent
Sterling Shepard	WR	Free Agent

Last year I had the pleasure of being able to say we didn't really lose anyone of note in free agency.

This year though. Jesus Christ.

To say the least it's been an incredibly tough offseason for Bucs fans.

Mike Evans took less money to go play for a team he thinks actually has a chance to win. The dream of Evans being a 1 team guy his whole career died after a very painful end to the season. He'll eventually come back and sign a one day contract to retire a Buc I imagine, and he'll certainly be in our ring of honor eventually. But this one will sting for a while. I sincerely hope he has another 1K season in San Fran and that the substation doesn't get him. But for real, absolute legend and I'm just thankful he gave us his all for 12 years. And we got him a ring which was amazing. If Tampa misses the playoffs and the 9ers make it, lots of Bucs fans will be band wagoning for Evans.

One guy who did end up completing his run as a forever Buc is Lavonte David who unsurprisingly retired this year. Depending on where you look he's either tied with Brooks for career tackles, or just barely ahead of him. (though Tampa seems to always say he tied Brooks so I guess that's the official number) He'd been flirting with the idea of retiring for a couple years now, but this was the first season ever where he looked noticeably slower, and less able to make up for the poor play next to him. Still had a good year individually and we would have happily had him back this year again but can't fault him to wanting to hang it up before his play truly declines. He's a franchise legend who became the mold for the type of player and human being this franchise seeks out. He is literally that man in our "I am that man" mantra. I look forward to him joining our ring of honor and hopefully one day we get to see him in a gold jacket even if it's a long time from now. Very glad we were able to get him a ring.

So we lost two franchise legends. Beyond that our other free agents lost combined don't extract as heavy a toll as just one of the above, but I'll go over it briefly.

Jamel Dean to the Steelers. This one is funky one. On paper Dean was the best CB in the league last year. Dean has great games, but he also has moments where he looks completely lost, and the running joke now is that when he gets burned Dean is on the ground acting injured. If you ask most Bucs fans, he's way overrated, injured too often, and gets burned more than a CB1 should. Maybe this works out for the Steelers, but we both couldn't afford to keep him and aren't upset about not paying him. However the deal he signed with Pitt was not terrible for the team. I'd personally say the Steelers got a better deal for Dean than the Patriots did with another former Bucs CB Carlton Davis.

Haason Reddick we let walk, turned out he is in fact washed.

Teddy Bridgewater, good riddance. Dude quite literally nearly paralyzed Jalen McMillan with a hospital ball in the preseason and killed a lot of hype we had for JMAC going in. Teddy's a good dude, but good lord he is a terrible QB at this point.

Rachaad White went to the Commanders. White was mostly good for us for a while. He's very serviceable back who's better as a shifty pass catcher in space than a true RB1. I won't say we're sorely going to miss him by any means, but most Bucs fans will remember White pretty fondly and wish him well. Think he'll be just fine in Washington and I know he's stoked to play with Jayden Daniels again.

Free Agents signed/re-signed

Player	Position	Old Team	Length	Salary
Alex Anzalone	ILB	Detroit Lions	2 years	$17 Million
Cade Otton	TE	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	3 years	$30 Million
Kenneth Gainwell	RB	Pittsburgh Steelers	2 years	$14 Million
A'Shawn Robinson	DL	Carolina Panthers	1 year	$10 Million
Al-Quadin Muhammad	ED	Detroit Lions	1 year	$4 Million
Miles Killebrew	S	Pittsburgh Steelers	1 year	$1.8 Million
Ko Kieft	TE	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	1 years	$1.7 Million
Christian Rozeboom	LB	Carolina Panthers	1 year	$1.6 Million
Dan Feeney	C	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	1 year	$1.5 Million
Justin Skule	LT	Minnesota Vikings	1 years	$1.4 Million
Jake Browning	QB	Cincinnati Bengals	1 year	$1.3 Million
Rakeem Nunez-Roches	DL	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	1 year	$1.3 Million
Ifeatu Melifonwu	S	Miami Dolphins	1 year	$TBD Million

Alex Anzalone is the biggest 'splash' signing we've made in years. Our LB corps has been so bad for a longtime outside of LVD and despite how good LVD has been he was finally starting to show his age and could no longer make up for poor MLB play. Alex Anzalone should be an immediate much needed upgrade over SirVocea Dennis.

Cade Otton getting 3 years was certainly received with mixed reviews by our sub. I'm in the camp that likes Cade a lot, he has made some clutch catches and prior to Grizz's offense that seemed to ignore Tight Ends mostly, Otton was a huge piece of the offense. Now with Robinson I don't know that much will change there, Pitts didn't exactly breakout under Robinson the past two years, but he did have his best season since his rookie year last year so who knows. Anyhow, maybe Cade will start wearing gloves to please the fans who always get mad when he drops a pass.

In the wake of Rachaad White leaving we signed Kenneth Gainwell, I admittedly was not super jazzed by this signing as it didn't seem like an upgrade over White on paper, but I'm trusting the word of Steelers fans who were really sad to see him go after having his best year of his career last season. Will be interesting to see the timeshare split between Bucky and Kenny.

A'Shawn Robinson and Al-Quadin Muhammad are supposedly guys signed to bring a bit of nasty attitude to the defense which is much needed. We've lacked a nasty attitude on the line since Suh and JPP left.

2026 Draft Class

Round	Round Pick	Overall Pick	Position	Selection
1	15	15	DE	Rueben Bain Jr
2	14	46	LB	Josiah Trotter
3	20	84	WR	Ted Hurst III
4	16	116	CB	Keionte Scott
5	15	155	DL	DeMonte Capehart
5	20	160	G	Billy Schrauth
6	4	185	TE	Bauer Sharp

Rueben Bain slipping was one of the biggest stories of the draft. Seems like even our front office was incredibly surprised he was available. Makes me really curious who they actually anticipated drafting. Had Bain not fallen to us I think our sub would have been extremely dismayed with our draft. Short arm criticisms aside, Bain has been making big splashes in camp and expectations for his rookie year are pretty dang high.

Bain addresses arguably the biggest pain point on our defense, the severe lack of pass rush. However I'm mostly excited to see if Bain's presence gives Yaya Diaby the breakout year we've been waiting for. In a contract year none the less.

Josiah Trotter was arguably a reach where we drafted him as he was picked earlier than most draft experts had him but it was a position of major need with LVD retiring and he's expected to start alongside Anzalone. Hoping some of his dads genes translate to play on the field.

With Evans leaving we picked up Ted Hurst to be our new big body possession WR/red zone threat. I don't expect him to have huge numbers in year 1 or be a starter by any means, especially with how many mouths we have to feed at WR, but his size and ability have me excited.

Keionte Scott and DeMonte Capehart are picks at positions of need as well, Keionte Scott certainly has an opportunity to see playtime int he likely event one of our corners is injured, hopefulyl he makes the most of it when/if that happens. Capehart I think will have a harder time seeing the field often with the plethora of other moves we made on the DL, but maybe he surprises us.

Billy Schrauth would only see playtime this year if we have another major rash of injuries, so lets hope he doesn't see the field after preseason. Recent camp reports have Elijah Klein being a bit disappointing though so far so perhaps Schrauth can take a roster spot away from him?

Bauer Sharp has been getting a good amount of love from our coaching staff and has been impressing a lot of people in camp. Hoping we see him get a lot of action in preseason, but he's a depth guy who likely won't see the field too much, especially with Otton getting a new deal.

Projected Starting Lineup

Position	Starter	Backup(s)
QB	Baker Mayfield	Jake Browning, Jalon Daniels
RB	Bucky Irving	Kenneth Gainwell, Sean Tucker
WR1	Chris Godwin	Tez Johnson
WR2	Emeka Egbuka	Ted Hurst III
WR3	Jalen McMillan	Kameron Johnson
TE	Cade Otton	Payne Durham, Ko Kieft, Bauer Sharp
LT	Tristan Wirfs	Ben Chukwuma
LG	Ben Bredeson	Dan Feeney
C	Graham Barton	Jake Majors
RG	Cody Mauch	Elijah Klein
RT	Luke Goedeke	Justin Skule
DE	Calijah Kancey	Rakeem Nunez Roches
NT	Vita Vea?	Elijah Roberts
DE	A'Shawn Robinson	DeMonte Capehart, Elijah Simmons
OLB	Yaya Diaby	David Walker
ILB	Alex Anzalone	Sirvocea Dennis
ILB	Josiah Trotter	Christian Rozeboom
OLB	Rueben Bain Jr	Al-Quadin Muhammad
CB	Zyon McCollum	Keinonte Scott, Josh Hayes
SS	Tykee Smith	JJ Roberts, Rashad Wisdom
FS	Antoine Winfield Jr.	Miles Killebrew
CB	Benjamin Morrison	Jacob Parrish
PK	Chase McLaughlin	N/A
P	Riley Dixon	N/A
PR	Kameron Johnson	Tez Johnson
KR	Kenneth Gainwell	Kameron Johnson
LS	Evan Deckers	N/A

Spideralex90's awful attempt at Schedule Predictions that surely will be 100% accurate

Week	Opponent	Result
Week 1	at Bengals	W
Week 2	vs Browns	W
Week 3	vs Vikings	W
Week 4	vs Packers	L
Week 5	at Cowboys	L
Week 6	vs Steelers	W
Week 7	at Panthers	W
Week 8	vs Falcons	W
Week 9	at Bears	W
Week 10	BYE WEEK	N/A
Week 11	vs Lions	L
Week 12	vs Panthers	L
Week 13	vs Chargers	L
Week 14	at Ravens	L
Week 15	vs Saints	W
Week 16	at Falcons	W
Week 17	vs Rams	L
Week 18	at Saints	L
Results	🏴‍☠️	9-8

Shoutout to my favorite sub r/Buccaneers along with my fellow mods past and present!

Continued in comments below

Hi everyone, first time contributor here. Wanted to share my impressions of the Redragon M925-WL-F. I've been a long time user of a wired G502, and in general I've loved that mouse, so that'll hopefully give you my frame of reference here as I've definitely not tried a ton of mice.

Anyhow I've been looking at a getting a wireless mouse for a while. I saw a video for the Logitech G604 on my YouTube feed and was immediately upset to learn that they discontinued it and that there's not too many options that fit the G604 mold that aren't super expensive. I debated getting a handful of different MMO mice but ultimately decided I'm going to shelve that for now

I pivoted to wanting a G502 Lightspeed since I'm familiar with that mouse already but having it be wireless would be so nice. Eventually I just gave up and decided I'll stick with my current G502 for now.

But I came across this mouse and it gave me "We have the G502 Lightspeed at home" vives. There was a sale for it on TikTok shop where I could get it for $19, normally it's supposed to be closer to $50 if the TikTok shop thing wasn't lying to me 😂 anyhow me being a major cheap ass I figured $19 couldn't hurt. So I ordered it. Unfortunately they sent me a M923 which is normally $20 not on sale and a completely different form factor. I got in touch with Redragon via tiktok to get a refund which they did give me but I was worried I wouldn't get the mouse on sale after returning it, funny enough after I did it was on a deeper discount and I got it for $17. And this time the correct mouse arrived.

So how is the mouse? I'll say it feels better than you might expect for such an inexpensive mouse. That said it certainly feels like a mouse made from inexpensive materials. It has this soft touch plastic which feels nice but on first touch your fingers leave oil stains. I can already tell the soft touch plastic on the main click buttons is going to wear out pretty quickly. The rubber grip on the side where your thumb goes is nice, but it's definitely going to be a gunk magnet that the ridges might make harder to clean. The RGB is fine, it is fully customizable in their software. The software is super basic but it does all I'd need it to personally.

The battery life seems decent but I honestly have no frame of reference for how long wireless mice batteries should last on average. I've had it for about two weeks and it seems to last about 4 days between charges and it takes maybe an hour to charge fully so not bad thus far. Will be interested to see how it holds up with time.

The grip has finger rests for where your ring and pinky finger can go which is nice for general use. Though I will say that plastic is not soft touch so it's a bit more slick so gripping the mouse to pick it up and move it took some getting used to.

This mouse does have a free spinning wheel which was one of my favorite parts of the G502. It works well on here and the non free spin mode is so much quieter than the G502. The wheel though has my only major gripe with this mouse. The wheel click is way too easy to activate and I often click it in while scrolling which always catches me off guard for a second. Might just be that I'm so used to the heavy wheel on the G502 though and perhaps I'll adjust to it with time.

All in all through 2 weeks I'm happy with this mouse so far. Really hard to complain if you can get it for under $20.

I'll be interested to see how it holds up and I'll try to do a follow up review in like 6 months to see how the materials fare after 6 months of daily use. And I'll still be praying that Logitech brings the G604 back.

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