Phillips Out 4-6 Weeks?

October 28, 2008 at 11:36am by Scott

Rick Stroud is reporting that the Bucs hope to have Jermaine Phillips back between 4-6 weeks, although when pressed at the press conference yesterday, Jon Gruden said he didn’t know how long he would be out, but that the fear was that he had a broken arm.

Coach Jon Gruden said that Phillips was evaluated Monday. The Bucs hope he can return in 4-6 weeks and have no plans to place him on injured reserve.

Says who, again? The Buccaneers web site doesn’t say anything definitive, but I didn’t expect it to.

Phillips fractured his other forearm in 2004, but that happened on December 22 and the Bucs were well out of the playoff race by then, so there was no hesitation to put him on injured reserve. I’m guessing that the team will keep him on the roster and that he’ll be back sometime in the season. But that’s just a guess based on what I know about broken arms and my ability to subtract. And I’m telling you that unlike Stroud and his mystery source. Well, I have a super secret mystery source inside the Buccaneers that tells me that Rick Stroud is a dogmatic douche.

In the meantime, Sabby Piscitelli will get the starts and Will Allen will get more playing time. If anything positive can be said of this it’s that it happened at a position that has the depth to accommodate it. Piscitelli has shown excellent ball awareness and real physicality in the time he has played. As long as someone choked the temptation to lateral a fumble out of him, he should be fine.