“It’s a game of inches”. “They just wanted it more”. “They didn’t pass the eye test”.
Cliches are hard to break. They give us easy narratives and simple answers to a complicated game. A way to package chaos in a neat bow. The 2017 season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was nothing short of complicated. Impossible preseason hype followed by two separate streaks of five consecutive losses on the way to a 5-11 record and the 7th pick in the 2018 Draft. A season to forget.
This isn’t a comprehensive autopsy of the 2017 season, but rather a peek at a slice of it that’s equal parts weird and undeniable, and maybe a little bit unexplainable.