ALL-IN: How the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Built the Super Bowl Champions

i don't know how you felt about the 2020 nfl season but for me it was over at breakneck speed i mean football season never lasts long enough but in such an unprecedented scenario it felt like a little bit of a fever dream to be honest but if there was one team that matched that fever dream energy it was undoubtedly the tampa bay buccaneers within an 11 month period while the world was ending the greatest quarterback of all time joined a new team and won a seventh super bowl title also making history as the first to do it in his home stadium because i mean what other records are there to break it's a timetable so incomprehensible i can understand why people think brady is the only reason the bucks were even in the same zip code as the super bowl hell he's played in half of them since he first became a starter but with tampa's turnaround in particular tom brady was less the superstar and more the catalyst to accelerate a young team's evolution an evolution that unlike how 2020 might have felt did not happen overnight some of the more veteran viewers on the channel will know that i have long been a fan of the tampa bay buccaneers so it's pretty safe to say that i've been looking forward to this one but since any money i would make from this is going straight into the hands of papa goodell i'm super excited this video is being sponsored by omaze and in a second i think you'll understand why now i've talked about omaze on the channel before and how they support great causes by offering insane and unique prizes like for instance oh here's one playing catch and having lunch with tom brady yes the goat has partnered up with omaze to fly someone and a friend out to meet tom try on one of his seven different super bowl rings and give your best rob gronkowski impression as he tosses you a dime in the end zone and the best part is a portion of every contribution benefits best buddies the world's largest organization empowering the 200 million people worldwide with intellectual and developmental disabilities so if having lunch with the greatest of all time and supporting best buddies international sounds like something that you can get behind head to the link in the description at omaze.com ste and use code ste 150 for an extra 150 entries again that is omaze.com ste with code ste 150 to make your donation and get those extra 150 entries so a huge thank you again to omaze and now let's fire off some cannons so let's take a big step back like all the way back in my knowledge of football as a kid i was not a big fan of the buccaneers i know i'm sorry but having spent the mid-2000s spoiled by watching urban meyer and tim tebow win championships at florida turning my attention to tampa bay was like getting hit with a frying pan made of losing not only had i missed the boat on their taste of super bowl glory but by the time i got caught up the bucks were in the midst of deciding whether or not they wanted to be mediocre or horrible on a season-by-season basis of course it wasn't as unbearable as the franchise's cursed owen 26 beginning and if anyone watching this was a fan in those days you have my sincere condolences but the bucks of the early 2010s had a unique vibe of being just mind-numbingly boring at least apart from the greg schiano years but after a particularly horrible 2-14 season in 2014 new general manager jason light would use their hard-earned first overall pick to embrace a new era of buccaneers football [Music] to this very day the subject of jameis winston's five seasons at quarterback for the bucks remains highly contentious you've got people who swear that he'll throw a pick on a running play and then on the other end you've got this gentleman who wrote a 404 page book in defense of jameis and his hall of fame career trajectory yes but this video is not about winston instead i want to direct our attention to the man i mentioned briefly before general manager jason light because for most of the buccaneers fan base that's been tuned into the team for the past half decade light was the bane of our existence up until very very recently and i'll be the first to admit that i once thought that light was a horrifically bad general manager i'm very sorry jason bud light's on me if we ever meet up but look things were not always pretty light became gm in 2014 but by the end of the 2018 season the buccaneers record under him was an abysmal 27 and 53 with zero playoff appearances also building up a very mixed track record through free agency and the draft there were some home runs like the best wide receiver in the nfc south but there were also a lot of misses and i don't want to have to mention it but we can't ignore the 2016 draft we're gonna release you but jumping back to the end of 2018 while light had just fired dirk cutter for failing to capitalize on the most badass start to a season ever there was also no shortage of people calling for light to pack his bags as well but with his next head coaching hire light would not only save his job he saved the buccaneers franchise as well enter bruce aryans former head coach of the arizona cardinals lured out of a short retirement by his longtime friend of course at the forefront of aryan's responsibilities would be to fix the buccaneers we'll say turbulent quarterback situation but that wasn't the biggest hurdle he was facing when he arrived at one buck place tampa bay hadn't made the playoffs in 11 years and had finished dead last in the nfc south seven of the last eight seasons when it comes to looking at a head coach's impact the toughest but most important thing to achieve is to get the entire organization to believe in your vision you might have the biggest football brain ever but once you start losing buy-in from within the building the wheels fall off insanely fast bruce ariens has always understood the value of that with confidence and loyalty being his two defining traits above all else say what you will about his football philosophy the man can lead as a result he quickly amassed the largest coaching staff in the nfl with 28 assistants a diverse and accomplished group that has followed aryans throughout his career if tampa was going to move forward from their disappointing past they had to abandon the losing culture that by that point was ingrained in the walls of their facilities but the buccaneers had been a mess burdened by poor leadership and discipline for years so despite aryans and co's best efforts that took more than a few weeks to clean up let's take the obvious and you're not gonna beat anybody with seven turnovers aryans has never shied away from calling out players in press conferences directly and that was especially the case during the buccaneers 2 and 6 start in 2019 however a clear line was drawn in week 10 when former top 10 pick vernon hargraves was cut from the team following a win against the cardinals with aryan citing a lack of hustle to the ball but this move wasn't just about hargrave's poor play in isolation it was about setting the tone for how tampa was going to approach the game under bruce arians putting an end to that complacency and though forging that new outlook wasn't easy on a team that had gone 5-11 for two seasons in a row it allowed bright spots to emerge on the buccaneers young roster placing them on the path to the super bowl well before anyone could have suspected on the defense coordinator todd bowles integrated his aggressive 3-4 base scheme predicated on disguising blitzes and coverages to be able to bring pressure from literally anywhere on the field making it all the more difficult for opposing offenses to exploit a given look while the unit went through growing pains in adapting to that new system especially in the team's young secondary the bones of that dominant 2020 defense would start to materialize in fact it went mostly unnoticed due to circumstances but by the back half of the season todd bowles defense finished out as one of the best in the nfl leaping from dead last in defensive dvoa in 2018 all the way up to fifth in 2019 per football outsiders tampa's run defense helped in particular by the emergence of vida veya as one of the most vicious interior defenders in football was the absolute best in the nfl on the whole you had a 2019 bucks defense that finished 15th in yards allowed top 5 in takeovers second in quarterback hits and 11th in nfl history in terms of rushing yards allowed by the numbers analytics and a good old-fashioned eye test once things clicked the buccaneers finished 2019 as a burgeoning elite defense and on the other side thanks to aryan's high-flying offense the buccaneers were fourth in points scored first in passing yards and second in passing touchdowns so from an outside perspective it certainly seems like in aryan's first year with the team he had accomplished his goal of getting the buccaneers back to playing winning football but the team went 7-9 if you're not a buccaneers fan you likely remember one thing about the team season in 2019 that jameis winston became the first quarterback in nfl history to throw 30 touchdowns and 30 interceptions in a single season remember how i said the bucks defense was ranked middle of the pack in yards and had one of the best rush defenses of the past two decades yeah well they would also finish fourth to last in points allowed and a massive part of that was field position the buccaneers rank dead last in giveaways and as a consequence also rank dead last in the average starting field position of their opponents i'm no expert but that's not ideal i was actually so dumbfounded by their ability to shoot themselves in the foot i made an entire half hour video trying to figure out if tampa could win with jameis winston under center and my conclusion was maybe for jason light there was definitely a decision to make do you keep the 5 000 yard passer you drafted with a sky-high ceiling and devastatingly low floor or do you admit failure and call your shot somewhere else because for as funny as it was getting rid of the league's most risk-prone quarterback might have been even riskier than keeping him but and on the other hand no risk get no biscuit clap the room i'm coming through they want to see what i'm about yeah i got skills do it for the thrill i wanna in easily the biggest move of the off-season the tampa bay buccaneers finally changed their uniforms to a design that isn't horrifying to look at tom brady signed two in all seriousness it was and probably will always be one of the most shocking free agent signings ever tb12 deciding to hang it up with the new england patriots after 20 years and six super bowl wins to start anew in tampa bay a team coming off a 7-9 record worse than he had ever experienced in the nfl but if we're talking about turnovers still brady had never thrown more than 14 interceptions in a season throughout his entire career but just like when aryans joined the team elevating the quarterback position wasn't the only contribution that brady was slated to make the culture shift had already begun in tampa bay but now the winningest player of all time would be yet another leader to cement that belief all of a sudden rob gronkowski was back out of retirement leonard fournette and lashawn mccoy were buccaneers running backs and bruce aryan's goal of bringing back his ascending defense just got a whole hell of a lot easier but while talking about free agent acquisitions dominated any discussion about the buccaneers let's take a look at what their starters would look like in 2020 devon white 2019 draft sean murphy bunting jamel dean 2019 draft scottie miller 2019 draft mike edwards 2019 draft vida veya 2018 draft ronald jones 2018 draft carlton davis 2018 draft jordan whitehead 2018 draft alex kappa 2018 draft chris godwin 2017 draft donovan smith 2015 draft ally marpette 2015 draft mike evans 2014 draft levante david 2013 draft will golston 2013 draft that's 15 or 16 of the 22 starters the buccaneers would field all homegrown draft picks forming the nucleus of the team not too bad recognizing a weakness from previous drafts jason light had also opted to pay up for pass-rushing talent adding jason pierre paul via trade in 2018 and signing the domikong sioux and shaquille barrett in 2019 with the latter recording an nfl leading 19 and a half sacks the previous season on just a four million dollar deal oh and absolutely not to be forgotten the bucks also signed kicker ryan suckup who after providing stability to the buccaneers kicking game i have built a shrine for in my room so having added a couple of other nfl greats to the roster there were only a couple of problem areas left the buccaneers offensive line was still pretty suspect and their young secondary could definitely use some help so in the 2020 draft jason light did it again two absolute stud additions in tristan worfs and antoine winfield jr worfs would come in right away at right tackle and immediately step up as one of the best in the nfl allowing just a single sack on 799 pass blocking snaps at safety winfield would lead all defensive rookies in snaps at 1034 never committing a single penalty either but i'm getting a little ahead of myself here because for as fun as the buccaneers might have looked on paper going into 2020 they were by no means going to have an easy time putting it all together coronaviruses getting a team to fully gel with a new quarterback is a massive task for a single offseason but it gets a little bit harder to do when you have essentially no off-season at all training camp was cut down social distancing fundamentally altered team gatherings tom brady got so disoriented he walked into the wrong house it was just not ideal especially for a qb trying to align in a new system alien to his usual style so while many had painted the team as super bowl contenders already that painting doubled as a massive target on their back and once the regular season kicked off it wouldn't take any time at all for critics to start firing shots directly at it for the first three quarters of the year the buccaneers were consistently inconsistent tampa bay showed flashes where they looked like the super team they'd been made out to be but there was also no denying that there were major flaws that had to be addressed if they wanted to make a postseason run at all despite having weapons the likes of chris godwin mike evans and even the addition of mr big chest antonio brown himself later in the season the buccaneers offense looked fundamentally broken a lot of the time the foremost example of that was in the team's 38-3 panting in prime time against the new orleans saints where brady's quarterback rating was 3.8 not a typo it's the lowest in the history of quarterback rating but it wasn't just new orleans in fact by week 14 the buck's win loss column against teams leading their division was a very shaky one and four the defense had issues of its own losing vitaveya to injury had significantly weakened their presence against the run and heading into thereby the team had been outscored 49-7 by opponents in the first half of their last four games so now those critics were growing louder there was buzz about the buccaneers regretting the tom brady experiment entirely rumors of a growing rift between aryans and brady calls for aryans to be fired the buccaneers were seven and five but with three losses in their last four it was exactly the type of media frenzy you get when a tom brady-led team looks vulnerable overblown yeah of course but there were real concerns beneath the clickbait headlines longer drops were putting more pressure on brady and as a result he had become rushed and imprecise from the pocket despite aryan's style brady wasn't traditionally a deep ball passer throughout his career and at 43 that was showing going into their previous game he was coming off of a streak of 19 straight incompletions beyond 20 yards and was on pace for the second highest interception total of his 20-year career so entering the team's buy there were some obvious problems to address and tampa bay was running low on time to address them a team's response to adversity is the thin line between champion and trainwreck but despite the doubts outside the building that bye week is where the culture cultivated by aryans and reinforced by brady showed a clear separation from bucks teams of the past while losing is never easy for a locker room there wasn't panic when players needed leadership they had it and when players were given solutions for the team's struggles by the coaching staff they trusted them taking advantage of weaker competition to right the ship in their last four games the offense came out of the by blazing averaging 37 points per contest recognizing where they were missing opportunities the offense incorporated more pre-snap motion and leaned on the running game more to open up play action on the other side of the ball bulls regrouped and altered his calls adding in new folds to further disguise their alignments and leaning more heavily on two man coverages a change that had been not so subtly suggested going into the team's buy but those changes paid off at 11 and 5 the buccaneers ended their playoff drought to return to the dance as a wild card team for the first time since 2007 but they weren't finished just yet in a game against washington the buccaneers would silence a rowdy chase young and hold him to zero sacks in a 31-23 win in the divisional round tampa bay would redeem their regular season losses to new orleans in a smothering defensive performance that would double as the last game of drew brees's career then in the nfc championship game the buccaneers would shock the one seed packers at lambeau field highlighted by a gutsy fourth down call just before halftime to connect with scotty miller on a 39-yard touchdown a massively important addition was the return of veda veya who recovered from a right leg and ankle fracture from back in week 5 to return just in time to wreak havoc on the packers interior offensive line opening lanes for shaq barrett and jpp who would combine for five sacks the bucks had played three road playoff games and earned three road playoff wins complete with 31 points in each and now an nfc title for tom brady giving him just as many as aaron rodgers and drew brees were the buccaneers or tom brady playing perfect football certainly not tom brady threw three interceptions in the nfc title game but tampa was by far playing its most complete football all season long and when both sides of the ball executed they were exactly the team that they had been billed to be but despite somehow returning home for the super bowl they recognized they had a different beast entirely waiting for them in kansas city their regular season matchup with the chiefs was their last loss to date and it was not a very pretty one tampa had a magical run to that point and no one was going to deny how impressive it was but among analysts consensus was pretty clear the chiefs were just simply too dominant to slow down after essentially sleep walking through the regular season to a 14-2 record pat mahomes and andy reed had once again found their groove just capping off a 38-24 afc championship blowout against an eager buffalo bills squad while the buccaneers had certainly been impressive they would need to be near perfect to best the defending champs of course you probably get where i'm going with this play action fake passed him he's going to score a touchdown touchdown tampa bay left under pressure he is going to sack at the 21-yard line dropping to throw the homes we run a stunt runner yard line wow he's clobbered fumble the football recovered by the chiefs mahomes running to his right lookout he may run muhammed director down battle intercepted kicked off at the end zone fox i gotta beat the chief to call tampa bay's performance in their 31 to 9 super bowl win masterful would be a ridiculous understatement todd bowles's defensive game plan will go down as a textbook example of how to learn from your past mistakes attacking the chief's weak spots while also eliminating the big plays that gutted them in their first meeting with casey's offensive line battered the buccaneers pressured mahomes 29 times on 56 dropbacks getting pressure with their front four constantly but also throwing change-ups like corner blitzes and unconventional looks to prevent the chiefs from adapting when you add in the buccaneers ability to disguise their coverages and shifting to a complete reliance on two high looks that had helped slow down the chiefs in their first match-up and it was a recipe for a mahomes offense to go without a touchdown for what was likely the first time in mahomes entire life devin white was absolutely everywhere on the field the defensive backs stepped up massively to shut down tyree hill and levante david put together a master class in physicality blanketing travis kelsey there wasn't a place you could point to on the field that didn't absolutely exceed expectation not to mention the sweetest revenge moment i've ever seen in my life on the other side of the ball it was fittingly the team's shiny free agent additions that led the way with rob gronkowski doing what he does in super bowls antonio brown coming up with his biggest catch of the season and lombardi lenny fernett capping off an unforgettable playoff run with well an unforgettable super bowl run even though they had dominated for 60 minutes it still felt entirely unreal in football's most uncertain year the gamble for tampa bay of going all in had actually paid off i think we knew this was gonna happen that didn't we [Applause] while the legacy implications of brady winning a seventh super bowl ring and doing it without his old boss understandably took center stage in the context of 2020 and just everything that took place in it the buccaneer super bowl win feels even more special than just that of course that might just be my bias speaking but tampa's win serves as really a testament to not only the importance of strong leadership to rapidly overcome your faults but also in recognizing when you have something special on your hands the phrase often referenced by jason light during the team's pursuit of tom brady was the famous quote from field of dreams if you build it he will come not many people outside of the buccaneers thought that tampa was a threat to go to the super bowl following a 7-9 season count me in that group but with the right coach and players in the locker room brady recognized there was something special being built there long before he walked through the door now having proven everything that can be proven a season later tom brady will look to do it again as he does brucerians forever a man of his word would not only get a tattoo in honor of the team's accomplishment but also went absolutely ballistic in promising to bring everyone back at the team's celebratory boat parade we're going to keep this band together and they know how to win your ass ain't going nowhere [Applause] [Music] in yet another insane feat they actually did it ariens and jason light became the first head coach gm duo to return all 22 super bowl starters in the salary cap era will they be able to make it two in february of 2022 well the odds are definitely stacked against them but if there's one thing that the insanity of the 2020 season proved it is that you never ever bet against tom brady you

Channel: Set the Edge

Views: 514,299

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Id: 0xa5U6F1bm0

Length: 24min 46sec (1486 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021