“(C)old Bay”

Just a few seasons ago, both the Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were facing each other in the NFC Championship. Aaron Rodgers was closing in on his third league MVP and for the first time in his legendary career, Tom Brady was playing with a brand-new team after two decades in Foxborough with the New England Patriots. The Buccaneers won that game, went on to play in the Super Bowl in their own home stadium, then the rest is history. They became the first team in NFL history not only to play in the Super Bowl in their own stadium, but they also won the game. Tom won his seventh Super Bowl. Last season, both the Packers and Bucs each won their divisions. Tampa Bay was the two seed in the NFC and the Packers were the top seed in the NFC once again. Both of them lost in the divisional round of the playoffs last season. That conference title game round was the first weekend without either Quarterback since 2009. This season, both teams are both struggling. Each have 3-4 records after seven games. What’s really the issue? Let me dive into this.

Packers: Matt LaFleur has been a solid coach since being hired by them in 2019. In his first three seasons, the Packers won 13 games, won the NFC North and clinched one of the top two seeds in the NFC Playoffs. Although they were losses, they also reached the NFC Championship game. The talk of the Packers has been Aaron Rodgers and I wouldn’t say it was for the right reasons. This off-season, Aaron got paid and they traded Davante Adams to the Las Vegas Raiders. The Packers now are struggling big time on both sides of the football. The offense is a complete shell of themselves. During the Summer, I kept saying for them to succeed, run this offense through Aaron Jones. It’s that simple! He’s their best offensive player that can impact the game as both a runner out the backfield and a receiver in the flat. There’s not a Linebacker in this world that can cover him. Establishing Aaron will actually help open up the passing attack! Too often, I see the Quarterback trying to force feed the ball to an inexperienced group of receivers. I also see when he attempts to get the ball to one of these younger Receivers and they don’t catch it, he doesn’t even bother to look their way the remainder of the game. I called him out on that once before and I’m doing it again. That actually hurts a young players confidence. Defense has always been an issue with the Packers for years and quite frankly, it hasn’t improved. They’re soft and they can’t stop the run. They don’t even attempt to tackle or make a stop. Here I was thinking the Packers would be a run first and defensive team until Aaron was on the same page with his new receivers. Some of these issues I’m pointing at the Quarterback. He got his money; this is what you do? This is unacceptable.

Bucs: It was an interesting off-season for them. It first started with Tom Brady announcing he was walking away from the game after a legendary 22-year career. 45 days later, the legendary Quarterback announces he’s returning for another season. On March 30th, Bruce Arians announced he was stepping down as the Head Coach and into a Front Office role. Defensive Coordinator Todd Bowles was named his replacement. Tom did miss those 11 days of training camp and it has affected him because he’s not on the same page with those new receivers. That chemistry is everything these days. Their offensive line is still a major issue. You can’t continuously allow your Quarterback to be pressured and hit as much as he has been. I think the biggest thing that concerns me with the Buccaneers is how much they miss Bruce Arians. What I admired about Bruce was not only did he light a fire under his team, but if things weren’t going right and they were struggling, he had zero issues with letting his players know. That’s the accountability I am talking about. You don’t see that under Todd Bowles. He had this same issue back when he was the Head Coach of the New York Jets. Did you all see the wide-open pass Mike Evans dropped yesterday? That’s unacceptable. The Bucs don’t scare anyone. They’ve lost their last two games to opponents under.500. I never thought I’d say this, but they must become a running team. They can’t depend on the Quarterback to bail them out and win games. In that loss to the Chiefs, Brady threw the ball 52 times. That’s way too much for him.

In the comments of this piece, I’d like to know who you think has a better shot of turning this around for the remainder of the season.