Not A Good Foundation To Rebuild On

On a day when New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress finally agreed to serve two years in prison for shooting himself in his own leg, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are running out of young players in their secondary due to further silly behavior.

First, third year free safety Tanard Jackson gets busted for abusing substances. Now, ESPN is reporting that young cornerback Aqib Talib has been arrested on battery charges for punching a cab driver in the head. This isn't even the first time Talib has been involved with idiot violent behavior. During a brawl during practice, Talib swing his helmet at a teammate, but hit an innocent bystander instead. Oops. He even got into a fight with a teammate at the NFL rookie symposium. That's a good impression to make.

So the Bucs now have a free safety that will miss four games because of substance abuse and they have a bona fide idiot at defensive back.

I will not perorate any further on this subject, but I will as the following question: Is this why you released aging All-Pro linebacker Derrick Brooks for? So the defense can devolve into this nonsense?

Somewhere the Bucs pirate is crying from under his eye-patch as he slowly lowers the cannon on his ship while the sail slowly flaps in the Florida breeze. Sad.

Brooks And Dunn No Longer Playing Tampa

So I arranged a blog just so I could use that title. Screw you for judging me.
Actually I just wanted to see if I could make a country and western fan slowly lower their confederate flag and sadly place it back in it's box before they realized I wasn't talking about the hick version of B&D. Maybe it worked. Probably not though.

Yes, the Tampa Bay Bucs have released both Derrick Brooks and Warrick Dunn along with Joey Galloway, Ike Hilliard, and Cato June. You can officially close the book on the Bucs you once knew. They no longer exist. No Warren Sapp, no Mike Alstott, no Jon Gruden...all gone from Tampa.

Who's left from the team we used to know: Ronde Barber? And I hear he's only staying in football because people finally have stopped calling him Tiki by accident. God forbid he retires and gets a job with NBC.

So the Super Bowl XXXVII champions are no longer hanging out near the pirate ships. Though I was first surprised by the releases, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

The Bucs aren't going anywhere near the Super Bowl in next few years. The team has no QB now that fetus-looking Jeff Garcia has been booted. The defense has no Monte Kiffin directing it, so there's no telling what will happen on that side of the ball.

New coach Raheem Morris apparently decided he was going to start from scratch with these guys and frankly, I don't blame him. He doesn't need holdovers telling him how Chucky used to do it or how Monte made THAT substitution during a nickle defense.

I doubt Brooks or Dunn would ever say something like that since they're two of the most openhanded and professional acting players around, but Morris is a young coach and those old veterans could very well have more pull with the rookies than he does next year.

More importantly, Morris is sending a message to everyone that the Bucs won't be playing the same kind of football we've gotten used to. No Gruden-esque West Coast offense that rotates 42 running backs whenever the coach's butt itches. No more game plans that call for 17 points by the offense and then hope the defense holds the opponent to 13 points.

That might be when the team looks like under Morris, but it's up to him. The slate is wiped clean. It's time for Raheem to build his own version of pewter power.