TAMPA — The locker room at Raymond James Stadium is so cramped, Bucs players gather in the showers before games. They're the only place big enough to hold all 53 football players, fully dressed and ready for battle.
It was there last Sunday, before the Bucs played Seattle, that Gerald McCoy laid his emotions bare before his teammates.
Two days earlier, cornerback Alterraun Verner had been plucked from a team meeting to be told his father had died of a heart attack at Verner's home in Tampa. Robert Lee Verner had been visiting for Thanksgiving.
McCoy knew exactly what Verner was feeling.