October has been a very bad month for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They’ve added four losses to the three with which they started the season. In all, they’ve lost 11 games in a row, and countinfg.
The remaining schedule shows scant soft spots over the final nine games, given them a shot at an 0-16 season.
On October 18, they drew 13,000 fewer people than showed up at their home stadium four days earlier to watch the USF Bulls.
Earlier today, co-chair Joel Glazer had to debunk rumors of financial troubles that could lead to the sale of the team.
And now, to make it even worse, the local UFL team would like to play the Bucs, because the local UFL team thinks it could beat the Bucs.
Per the St. Petersburg Times, running back Michael Pittman, who at one point played for the Buccaneers, said there are some players on his Florida Tuskers team who would “probably tell you we can [beat the Bucs].”
And then running back Tatum Bell said, “I’m one of them.”
Though Bell might know something about stealing a guy’s luggage (allegedly), it’s impossible to predict what the best team in the UFL would do against one of the worst in the NFL. Besides, there’s no way to prove what would happen unless the two teams play each other.
Still, while Tuskers coach Jim Haslett admits that the UFL “may not be the National Football League,” he thinks his new team is “pretty close.”
And Haslett would know. Last year, he took over on an interim basis a Rams team that, after upsetting the Redskins and the Cowboys on consecutive Sundays, embarked on an 0-10 slide that is now at seventeen and counting.
So Haslett knows bad NFL football -- and good UFL football -- when he sees it.