Bucs Considering Pissing Season Away

June 17, 2009 at 11:42am by Scott

Quarterbacks coach Greg Olson made a statement today that the Bucs are considering accelerating Josh Freeman’s timeline and getting him ready to start sooner rather than later. Why? Because they hate you, that’s why.

“We did talk last week, and when I say we, I’m talking about everyone in the building from the GM, the head coach, Doug Williams – other people were involved and we just discussed the Josh Freeman plan,” Olson said. “We decided we’ll go through the summer, we’ll go probably a week into training camp and we’ll revisited it again…we may expedite what he’s doing.

“You know, maybe we get him involved early — earlier than we thought.”

The stated goal before was to put the best quarterback on the field. That’s the only reason why Byron Leftwich hasn’t sliced his wrists yet — he was told that the best quarterback would start. And there’s no way you can tell me that Freeman is going to be the best quarterback by the preseason. Everything I’ve heard from eyewitnesses has been that Luke McCown is performing the best at the OTAs, and by a not-insignificant margin. So it sounds like maybe the goal has changed and that’s to get Freeman up to the minimum skill level needed to be an NFL quarterback and then let him learn on the job. That’s a hell of a shift in philosophies in a month.

The rational part of me likes it. I have to root for Freeman because the Bucs are invested in him. He’s eventually going to be the guy, so you might as well get him some reps and get the shit season out of the way early like Peyton Manning and Troy Aikman did. But I really like McCown and want to at least see what the guy can do with several back-to-back games. If he stinks it up, you put Freeman in mid-season and he hasn’t lost all that much. If he does well, you have built up his trade value for a team out there looking for a competitor. But I guess they feel that the extra starts Freeman would get are more valuable than what McCown can potentially fetch in trade.

“He didn’t seem nervous in the huddle at all last week and that was a great sign. He made some big throws as well.”

Oh god, tell me this isn’t all because of that one damn ball he threw last week. Was it even a ball? Maybe it was a chunk of the original cross or a viable pterodactyl egg. Then it would make more sense why people are making it out to be so fucking important.

None of this is in stone, but you have to think that if the Bucs have already flipped their position on this mid-June, they’ll be completely bought into the idea by the time training camp is over. Good for Freeman and all. I hope he does well. But this is going to be a shaky season.