Hello, everyone. The S.S. Mailbag is back! I'll be doing this every week (for the most part) during the offseason, so please don't hesitate to send me questions. See below for the various ways to do so.
If you're new to reading the mailbag, I generally start with an intro unrelated to the questions from Buccaneer fans that follow below. Basically, just whatever topic is on my mind. And someone who has been on my mind since just after the 2024 season ended is all-time Tampa Bay great Lavonte David.
As we turn the page from one season to the next offseason, we always focus on the changes that we know are coming. Which players might arrive or leave in free agency? What will the draft bring to the roster? For the Buccaneers specifically, and for the third year in a row, who will be the offensive coordinator? And in David's case, will he choose to extend his marvelous career to a 14th season? Only Hall of Famers Rondé Barber (16) and Derrick Brooks (14) have played that many seasons for the Buccaneers.
We may be thinking about these things, but Lavonte wasn't quite ready to do so right after the season ended. The next day he said his immediate focus was on relaxing, recuperating and spending time with his daughter. He also said that it was important to him to "go out on his own terms," meaning that if he chose to continue his career he would do so with the certainty that he would still be playing at a high level. The last two years, he believed that would be the case and signed a pair of one-year contracts, and both times he was right.
I'm sure I speak for the vast majority of Buccaneers fans when I say that I hope and believe that Lavonte will be back in 2025. Think about what he just did in his 13th season. He was the team's leading tackler by a wide margin with 122 stops, marking the 11th time in those 13 seasons that he has topped double digits in that category. His 5.5 sacks were his most since his 2013 first-team All-Pro season, and they came on the heels of his 4.5-sack campaign in 2023. He had three more forced fumbles, because of course he did, giving him a remarkable 31 in his career. That is an outrageous number for a player who gets almost none of his forced fumbles from strip-sacks.
David was 34 when he did all that; he just turned 35 a week ago. (Happy Belated Birthday, Lavonte!). The sack became an official NFL statistic in 1982; only three times since has a player aged 34 or older had at least 120 tackles and at least five sacks in a season. That's Lavonte, the Saints' Demario Davis in 2023 and the Panthers' Sam Mills in 1996. Even if you lower the tackle threshold to an even 100, there have only been six such seasons, the three listed above plus the Steelers' James Farrior in 2010, the Colts' Cornelius Bennett in 1999 and the Browns' Clay Matthews in 1992.
Whenever David does choose to hang up the cleats (again, let's cross our fingers it's not in the next few months), the clock will start ticking on his Hall of Fame eligibility. It's cliché at this point, but also still very true, that David has been one of the most underrated players in the NFL at any position in the last 20 years. One Pro Bowl invitation! Laughable. But along the way the numbers have piled up into an extraordinary resume. Hopefully, those numbers continue to grow in 2025.
Now on to your questions.
A reminder that you can send questions to me any time you want on Twitter (@ScottSBucs) and they're easier to find if you include the hashtag #SSMailbagBucs. We are also now soliciting questions each week on our Instagram page and on the Buccaneers app; look for that on Wednesdays. As always, if you want to get a longer question into the mailbag and would prefer to email your question, you can do so to tbbsocial@buccaneers.nfl.com.
Is Bucky Irving prepared to be RB1 next year?
- @nolanbleiberg, via Instagram
I can't see why not. He and Rachaad White formed a nice one-two punch for most of Irving's rookie season, and White remained the starter for most of the year, but by December and January it seemed obvious that the coaching staff wanted to get the ball into the rookie's hands as often as possible because he was an explosive play waiting to happen. Five of his six highest single-game carry totals happened in the last five weeks, playoffs included. Meanwhile, White only took 10 handoffs over the last four games combined. I think Todd Bowles and his staff would actually prefer a more even split – Bowles said that at one point near the end of the season – but it seems clear going forward that Irving will be featured more prominently.
Irving was easily the most productive rookie running back in the NFL in 2024, with 1,122 rushing yards and 1,514 yards from scrimmage, which made him an obvious steal as a fourth-round draft pick. Irving was the same sort of player at Oregon, with impressive run-after-contact and pass-catching numbers, but he likely slipped to Day Three of the draft because he was considered relatively "undersized" at 5-9 and 192 pounds and his 4.55-second 40-yard dash time at he NFL Scouting Combine wasn't in the elite range. His size might lead to durability questions, but he played through a nagging foot injury as a rookie and appeared in all 17 games. He also played all 27 games during his two seasons with the Ducks.
I think the bigger question is, where will Irving rank among all RB1s in the NFL in 2025. He was 10th in the league in rushing yards in 2024 but only tied for 19th in carries. He averaged 9.2 carries per game over the first nine games of the season, then 15.7 per game over the last nine (playoffs included). At his average of 5.42 yards per carry – which, by the way, blew the Bucs' previous single-season record of 5.09 completely out of the water – 15.7 carries per game would translate to a 1,447-yard campaign. That would have ranked fourth in the NFL in 2024. That's probably a bit of an ambitious projection, particularly if the Bucs go back to getting White more involved in the ground game or give some more opportunities to Sean Tucker, but I think Irving at least has a chance to be a top-five back in the league.
What was the press box reaction to Mike's record tying game?
- @oliveradamm13, via Instagram
In case you don't know this about working in an NFL press box, every NFL game is preceded by a handful of messages from an internal public address announcer. Some of it is a run-down of the team's roster changes and inactive players, but one part is always about press box decorum. In the Bucs' press box, it goes like this:
"As a reminder, this press box is run in accordance with the Pro Football Writers of America regulations. Cheering for either team is prohibited and anyone failing to comply with this policy is subject to ejection from the press box."
Mind you, I've never actually witnessed a press box objection first-hand, but I've heard of a couple of occasions. I can tell you that if this rule had been adhered to strictly after the play in question, there wouldn't have been many people left in the press box. At least among those in attendance who either work for the team or cover it regularly, I don't think there were many who didn't make at least some noise. I think mine was an emphatic, "Yes!" if I remember correctly.
I mean, this was understandable. For anyone who doesn't know what we're discussing here or is a little fuzzy how it all went down, let me describe how it went down. Mike Evans, who already owned an NFL record with at least 1,000 receiving yards in each of his first 10 seasons in the league, was trying stretch that to 11 and tie receiving G.O.A.T. Jerry Rice for the most consecutive such seasons at any point in a career. Thanks to a hamstring injury that had cost him three games and most of a fourth in the middle of the season, it came down to the final week. Evans needed 85 yards in the regular season finale against New Orleans, and after catching two nine-yard passes in what would prove to be a game-clinching touchdown drive, he was at 80 yards. Todd Bowles had acknowledged during the week that the team considered it important to help Evans get the record, but that was the team's second priority on the afternoon. Most importantly, the Bucs needed a win to ensure they would take home a fourth straight NFC South crown and advance to the playoffs.
The drive in question reached a second-and-two at the Saints' 11 at the two-minute warning. The Bucs called play that had Evans as Baker Mayfield's first read, but it wasn't open and the quarterback was quickly chased out of the pocket by the Saints' pass rush. As he was about to be taken down, Mayfield improvised a little flip to his right to Irving, and the rookie back let his instincts take over as he dashed all the way to the right pylon and into the end zone. The touchdown put the Bucs up by eight, 27-19, meaning the Saints would have to drive the length of the field in the final 1:51, score a touchdown and get the two-point conversion to send the game to overtime.
That was a good situation for the Bucs. Technically, the best thing that Irving could have done to secure the victory for his team would be to slide down before the end zone. The Saints would have had to use their second timeout with about 1:40 left, and then it would have been first-and-goal. The Bucs would have then been able to run out the clock on a 20-19 win.
Instead, the Saints had the ball one last time. The Bucs needed a stop, first and foremost, to finish off the victory. But they also wanted to get the ball back one more time with something left on the clock so they could take one more crack at getting Evans at least five more yards. After a fourth-down incompletion by Spencer Rattler, the Bucs' offense came back on the field with 36 seconds remaining. Jalen McMillan and Sterling Shepard ran clear-out routes and Evans ran a little hitch underneath them, catching the ball three yards past the line of scrimmage and then turning up the field for six more. The reaction not just from Evans but all of his teammates and the Bucs' whole sideline underscored how big of a deal this was to the team.
Well, that's the way it felt in the press box, too. It got a little loud, but it was also over very quickly because that was the last play of the game and a lot of the people working in the press box now needed to get down to the locker room and the postgame press conference room. Yeah, we broke the rule. Sue us.
How do you feel about Liam Coen leaving?
- Eddie H. via the Bucs' app
Well, it's hard to feel great about it, other than the fact that becoming a head coach in the NFL was a dream for Coen and you like to see the people you work with realize their dreams.
As the Bucs' 2024 season was drawing to a close and the idea that Coen was likely to be a candidate for one or more open head coaching positions, Head Coach Todd Bowles was asked multiple times about his thoughts on the possibility of the Bucs' losing a coordinator after just one season for the second year in a row. He would frequently repeat something that Sean Payton had said to him; paraphrasing: "That means we're picking the right people."
It's a good point and the hope now is that Bowles and Jason Licht and those involved in the search for a new OC can pick the right person again after hiring Dave Canales (now the Panthers' head coach) in 2023 and Coen (now the Jaguars' head coach) in 2024. Still, there's never any guarantee with any coaching hire, or free agency acquisition, or draft pick, so it only makes sense to prefer the proven commodity over the unknown.
Since the Bucs were reportedly prepared to make Coen the highest-paid coordinator in the league, it seems obvious that their first preference was also to stick with the status quo. That's understandable after Tampa Bay's offensive performance in 2024 was one of the best in franchise history, with top-five rankings in most major statistical categories. But team success breeds opportunity for the individuals involved, so this kind of thing is going to happen on occasion. There are a lot of talented coaches out there waiting for their own opportunities as a coordinator; I trust Licht and Bowles to find the right one. Whoever it is will have a lot of very good players to work with, from Pro Bowlers Mike Evans and Baker Mayfield, to impressive 2024 rookies Bucky Irving and Jalen McMillan, to one of the league's better offensive lines.
How would you describe Graham Barton's rookie season?
- @shetallent92 via Instagram
A rousing success with room to grow.
It's hard to make a really strong statistical argument for offensive linemen beyond team success, but I think Barton deserves a decent amount of credit for the Bucs ranking fourth in the NFL in rushing yards and third in yards per carry. Offensive lines are generally only as strong as their weakest link, and with that kind of success, it seems like the Bucs didn't really have a weak link up front in 2024.
Consider that Barton hadn't played center since his freshman year at Duke, working at left tackle his last three seasons. Making the transition from college to the pros and from the edge to the middle of the line is a challenge, and some growing pains were to be expected. From a mental standpoint, center is probably the toughest position to play on the O-Line, as that player usually has to help the quarterback with defensive recognition, blitz pickups and pre-snap adjustments. That's not easy to quantify or even recognize when you're watching a game, but from all accounts from Barton's coaches and teammates, he handled that very well.
There aren't many Tristan Wirfs out there, offensive linemen who land in the NFL as fully-formed superstars from Day One. Most take some time to adjust and become their best selves. Look at the big leap right guard Cody Mauch made from his 2023 rookie season to last year. Same thing with Luke Goedeke in his second year at right tackle. I can tell you for a fact that the Bucs' coaching staff was pleased with Barton's rookie campaign, but he also is likely to get a lot better in seasons to come.
What is the best movie soundtrack of all time?
- Jack S. via the Bucs' app
I am definitely not an expert on move soundtracks or albums in general. Not even close. So I think the best I can do is name a couple that I like.
As an unabashedly huge Prince fan my whole life, I guess number one for me would have to be Purple Rain. Does that count? I'm pretty sure the album came out before the movie, but not by much. I think it's one of the best albums of all time, full stop, so if it counts as a soundtrack than it would have to be my top choice.
Two others I have always enjoyed that are a bit more obscure are Juice and Sliver. The former is a 1992 movie staring Tupac Shakur and Omar Epps and the soundtrack features the likes of Big Daddy Kane, Too $hort, Eric B. and Rakim, Salt-N-Pepa, Cypress Hill, EPMD and Naughty by Nature. My favorite song from the album is Eric B. and Rakim's eponymous "Juice," but almost every one is a banger.
Sliver is definitely more obscure, an erotic thriller from 1993 starring Sharon Stone, Tom Berenger and William Baldwin. The movie itself wasn't very good – it received seven "Golden Raspberry Award" nominations – but the soundtrack is weird, in a good way. I think the only hit from it is UB40's "Can't Help Falling in Love," but the whole thing is worth a listen. If you decide to check it out, don't forget that I told you it's a little weird.
I guess you can tell that my music tastes were formed in the early, '90s, huh?
(Oh, and if my wife were answering this question she would definitely say Reality Bites, and she might be right. And, yes, it's from the early '90s.)
