On Sunday, Bucs coach Raheem Morris removed starting quarterback Byron Leftwich from the 24-0 loss to the Giants.
After the game, Morris said that Leftwich would keep his position.
On Monday, Morris benched Leftwich, dropping him behind both Josh Johnson and Josh Freeman.
On Wednesday, Morris said that Leftwich will nevertheless continue as a team captain.
“He’s still a captain, there’s no doubt about it,” Morris said in comments distributed by the team. “He’s still assuming those responsibilities. He’s helping those guys right now, the young guys. I told you guys he’s a great guy and I meant it. He is a great guy. He’s a team leader. He’s still a team leader. He was a team leader in today’s meeting. He was a team leader on the field today. His positive attitude about this thing is what makes it a little bit easier for this team, what makes it a little bit easier for everybody that loves him, because of how he is, how great a person he is.”
Morris also addressed the general struggles that the team has faced through three games, using some questionable reasoning.
“[W]hen [Tony] Dungy was here, they were starting slow every year,” Morris said. “They would be 0-3, 0-1 or 0-4 and they would run off six or seven wins, take their team to the playoffs, go 9-7, and lose to the Eagles. That was just the nature of the beast around here.”
Ugh. If our eyes aren’t deceiving us, Morris seems to be saying that it’s OK for the 2009 Bucs to be 0-3 because the Buccaneers under Dungy typically dug a hole and then crawled out of it, only to peter out in the first round of the playoffs.
That’s not how we remember it. Because that’s not how it went.
In 1997, the Bucs started off 5-0, finished 10-6, won a playoff game over the Lions, and lost in the divisional round to the Packers.
In 1999, the Bucs started 2-1, went 11-5, won the NFC Central, and nearly beat the supposedly unbeatable Rams for a berth in Super Bowl XXXIV.
In 2000, the Bucs started 3-0, a far cry from 0-2.
In 2001, the Bucs started 2-1, finished 9-7, and lost to the Eagles in the playoffs.
Indeed, the only year the Bucs went 9-7 and lost to the Eagles in the playoffs was 2001, Dungy’s last year with the team.
The bigger problem is that Morris seems to think that the 2009 Bucs are simply going to wake up from an 0-3 nightmare and reel off a bunch of wins simply because he incorrectly recalls that losing early and winning late was the modis operandi during a completely different era in the franchise’s existence.
Look, we know he had to say something in response to the question regarding whether he can turn it around, but it’s odd that he would choose to rely upon bad assumptions that, even if they weren’t bad assumptions, would have no relevance to the present circumstances.
The Bucs under Tony Dungy had guys like Warren Sapp and Warrick Dunn and Derrick Brooks and John Lynch and I don’t see many guys of that skill level on the current roster.
What’s Morris supposed to say? “We stink and may not win a game all year”? In 1997, we didn’t know that Sapp, Lynch and Brooks were going to be the Sapp, Lynch and Brooks they became. I don’t know if Josh Freeman, Barrett Ruud and Roy Miller are going to be great. And maybe Morris needs some time to grow into the role. As a Buc fan, I survived Sam Wyche, Trent Dilfer, all of Dungy offensive coordinators, Dungy’s firing and Gruden’s patchwork teams. I’m patient…to a point.
He’s still a captain
Sinking along with the ship
Mutiny, ahoy!
Dungy started coaching for the Buccaneerss in 1996 and started 0-5. This information seems to be conveniently left out. This article is a stretch…
Well as the captain of the team, Leftwich should bench Raheem Morris. Morris obviously doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing and will be fired at the end of the year if; unless Leftwich handles his captain duties first.
Somewhere John Gruden is laughing his ass off…
Florio, not everything is a story. Quit finding quotes from Morris and turning them around on him just so you can bash the Bucs. I watched the whole interview closely and teh basic story from that part of it is if they work hard they can come out of this. They probably won’t win enough games to got to the playoffs but they are not nearly as bad off as you continually make them out to be. The Bucs at 0-3 right now have played 2 top tier teams while teams like the Broncos who are being called this rising team have played teams like the Browns, Bengals (who are looking better), and the Raiders. The record doesn’t always tell the story of what is going on. This is a young team still trying to find thier idendtity, 99% of the time that doesn’t happen overnight, give it time and quit looking for every excuse to bash them!
The Bucs lost to the eagles in 2000 too, and twice in 2001…the last game of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs. Being from Tampa, I remember the Bucs always hovering at or below the .500 mark until mid-season, then finishing 8-8, 9-7 or 10-6 when Dungy was there.
Whether the Eagles beat ‘em or not, except for the year they played the Rams, they always got knocked out in the first round. The Eagles beat them every year until the Super Bowl year.
True, they had great players, but there’s a reason Tony Dungy got fired. He couldn’t get it done when it mattered most. (i.e. the playoffs)
Nice. Make the captain go down with the ship.
Of course he’s gonna remain team captain he’s one of the veterans on the team. Lets see who the other captains are… Barber(check) Hovan(check) Faine(the oldest of the linemen)
and Will Allen (not really sure why)
But all were voted on by the players, and what? is the team gonna get together and say” we’ll not that he’s not playing lets change the captain to uhhh Josh johnson.”
Morris is merely a placeholder. They’re bad this year on purpose. Next year they get a new coach and a high draft pick.
Morris is a placeholder. Next year the Glazer’s sell the team, and they get a new coach and bunch of new players….
how did this guy get a head coaching job in the nfl?
Quite possibly the most boring post ever on PFT. I’m sorry I wasted my own time to comment.
That was some pretty classless and disrespectful BS that Raheem said about Coach Dungy. Especially when you factor in what Dungy was about to do down here for this team. You are talking about a man who in 6 years only had one losing season, 4 playoff seasons, and was basically one play away from the Superbowl in 1999. And while I was willing to be open minded about Raheem when he got the job this year, this kind of revisionist history just to try to take the heat off himself is what you call bush league. He ought to call Coach Dungy and apologize before the week is out and thats real.
One more thing, if Raheem wanted to be right on his history Jon Gruden’s first year the team DID start off slow then went on a late season roll and ended up winning a Superbowl. Why Morris would want to take a shot at Dungy who hasn’t coached here since 2001 and did a fantastic job putting together a winner is totally a head scratcher to me.
morris is a doofus.
Rah Rah Moron needs a history lesson. The Bucs were coming out of the trifects of Perkins-Williamson-Wyche when Dungy took over, so an 0-5 start was not unusual.
Rah Rah inherited a team that, at 9-3, was discussed as one of the best defenses in the NFL and a possible Super Bowl run. So, what does he od? Cuts the leaders, hires idiot assistants, changes the scheme, and begins dumping on his players in the newspaper.
In 3 short weeks, the Moron has sucked the life out of the team, inflicted damage to the delicate psyches of Winslow, Bryant and Adams, and proven that he does not know what to say or when to shut the hell up.
Tony Dungy never called out a player. Not once. He was calm, deliberate, consistent, and inspiring. Morris has none of these qualities.
For Morris to even draw an analogy between his appalling start and Coach Dungy’s is funny. Let’s see how much longer Bryan and Joel are laughing at this debacle of their doing.
Raheem Morris is so overmatched. I feel bad for all the Buccaneers players and the free agents who signed with that team. Ownership can say what they want, but this was clearly a salary purge (players and coaches) to save up cash for uncapped years.