The Buccaneers have lost a key member of their starting defense.
The team announced Thursday that defensive end Da’Quan Bowers tore one of his Achilles tendons in the team’s offseason workout program. He is expected to have surgery on the injury Friday. We don’t yet know if it was a full or partial tear so the timetable for his return is still unknown, but Bowers tweeted that he plans to play this year. That doesn’t make this any more welcome a piece of news.
Bowers got off to a slow start as a rookie coming off of microfracture surgery on his knee, but he picked up his play a considerable amount as the year progressed. With Adrian Clayborn on the other side of the line, the Bucs felt good about their young ends and their potential moving forward. Now Bowers has suffered another serious injury and the team will have to wait to find out what kind of impact it has on his performance.
Michael Bennett will likely step into Bowers’ starting role, which has its pros and cons. The pro is that Bennett played well for them last season and is still on the upswing of his career. The con is that the team is now tissue paper thin at defensive end and they will have to kick the tires on free agents while scanning the waiver wire for help up front this season.