WAKE-UP CALLS AND THEN THERE ARE WAKE-UP CALLS

Via. Paul Stewart | bucpower.com:

There comes a time in every defending Super Bowl champion’s season that reality sets in. Wins are not automatic. There is no divine right to expect success each week simply because it happened in the final game of the previous season. Welcome to the 2021 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

There are wake-up calls, and there are wake-up calls. And then there is the time your mother comes in and smacks you round the head with a frying pan and tells you to get up. Bruce Arians has that frying pan in his hand – will his team listen?

The same thing happened to the 2003 Bucs. Some middling performances, an astounding loss to the Colts on Monday Night, and they wound up 7-9 and missing the playoffs in spite of still having nearly all that incredible defense in place — because it was 2003 and not 2002.

Fast forward 18 years: “We have Tom Brady. We will win regardless”. Not so fast, my friends. When you are top of the pile, everyone wants to knock you off, and Washington did yesterday just like New Orleans did two weeks ago. And the Giants, Colts, Falcons, Panthers, and anyone else left on the schedule will want to as well.

The Bucs are 6-3 and still leading the division by a game. But the alarm is ringing loudly. Can Arians make his team listen before it is too late?