Bucs avoid Super Bowl hangover, they’re better this year than last
Super Bowl hangover is very real. No NFL champion has repeated since the 2003 New England Patriots. There’s not much mystery here. Winners expect to be compensated. The payroll is pushed upward, salary cap squeezed, valuable players lost, often causing bitterness that lingers in the locker room. Some players who remain become complacent, resting on laurels. Coordinators leave to become head coaches elsewhere.
The hangover tends to be even worse for Super Bowl losers. They keep reliving the failure, leading to more failure. The 2015 Carolina Panthers were upset by Denver in the Super Bowl and won only 6 games the next season. The 2018 LA Rams lost the Super Bowl by 10 points and failed to make the playoffs in 2019. San Francisco last season followed a Super Bowl loss to Kansas City by not making the playoffs.
Of course there are exceptions. The Patriots beat the Rams after losing to Philadelphia in the previous Super Bowl. And the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, winners of Super Bowl 55, show every sign of maintaining their talent level for the upcoming season. Tom Brady is openly talking of a perfect season, which barely eluded him when he quarterbacked the Patriots to 18-1 in 2007.
Because the Buccaneers did everything Brady wanted, they improved throughout last season. When the New Orleans Saints beat them for the second time, Brady exhorted the Bucs’ defense: “Keep doing what you’re doing, and we’ll fix the offense.”
It took Gronk rediscovering himself as a receiver. It took Antonio Brown being Antonio Brown on the field and a monk off it.
It took the solidifying of an offensive line that Brady had publicly chastised. It took Bruce Arians expanding the scope of his offense, thinking horizontally as much as vertically.
In the end, the defense jumped several steps forward. Devin White matured, while Jason Pierre Paul and Ndamukong Suh did not age. A young secondary found cohesion. The coordinator, Todd Bowles, found rhythm. It seemed fluky because it all happened so fast.
And, amazingly, none of the starters on offense or defense departed in free agency. Shaq Barrett and Lavonte David extended. David is especially underrated – the best coverage linebacker in the NFL. He did more than hold his own against Travis Kelce in the Super Bowl. Also returning is Brady’s great reclamation project, Antonio Brown, who was not a starter but scored when it counted most, in the Super Bowl.
Unlike most Super Bowl champions, the Bucs did not lose either of their coordinators, Byron Leftwich on offense and Bowles on defense. Would they be gone if they were white-skinned?
It’s possible the team that thrashed Kansas City in February has not peaked. Not that Brady at 44 will punch out a new ceiling, but in the offseason Tampa Bay has corrected most of its flaws, and it didn’t have many.
Bucs running backs dropped 15 passes last season, so they signed one of the league’s better third-down backs: Geo Bernard, 29, cut by Cincinnati, which did not want to pay his $5 million salary.
Other teams were interested, but Bernard quickly signed with Tampa for $1.2 million. Shows the lure of the Lombardi.
Last year the Bucs’ return teams were below average, so they used a fourth-round pick on the elusive Jaelon Darden from North Texas.
They were thin at offensive tackle, and even thinner after Joe Haeg Left. But they’re being widely praised for drafting Notre Dame’s Robert Hainsey in the third round. He committed zero penalties in 863 snaps last season.
General manager Jason Licht tends to be underappreciated because Bruce Arians and Brady have so much impact in the roster-building. But Licht is in charge of drafting, and he’s good at it. The grades are in – way too early of course – and the Sporting News ranked the Buccaneers’ draft as No. 8 – outstanding when you consider they were choosing last.
This year Licht did his best work on defense, spending a first-round pick on Washington linebacker Joe Tryon, 6-5, 262 pounds, with the speed of a safety. He’s another who can cover Travis Kelce or end-rush Patrick Mahomes.
Although they led the league in run defense, the Bucs last season sometimes were vulnerable through the air. But their secondary tightened in the postseason and returns all its starters, none of whom are older than 24. You can expect improvement.
Vegas bookmakers have Tampa Bay at 7-1 to repeat as Super Bowl champions. The schedule is favorable, the most difficult matchup coming in Week 3, when the Bucs play the Rams in Los Angeles.
The most anticipated game will be in Week 4, a trip to Brady’s former home, New England. Brady hasn’t said much about it, but his father, Tom Brady Sr., boldly predicted that the Buccaneers “will win handily.” The widespread assumption is that he’s echoing the sentiments of his son. This could be a rare champion that’s hangover-proof.
