TAMPA, Fla. -- The summer of Lovie is over.
It ended Sunday afternoon as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost, 48-17, to the Baltimore Ravens. If you want to get even more specific, you can point to when the Ravens made the score 28-0 with one second remaining in the first quarter as the breaking point. Or maybe it was when Baltimore reached its high-water mark with a 38-0 lead in the second quarter.
Whenever, it now is safe to say Buccaneers coach Lovie Smith no longer is the most popular guy in town. Many of the same fans that applauded Smith’s hiring back in January were booing him as Baltimore’s lead got out of hand.
Smith’s honeymoon period is over. The guy that was supposed to turn the franchise around has it off to a 1-5 start and the natives are getting restless. You could hear it in the noise coming from the stands.
“[A record of] 1-5 says we’re not a good football team and we're not a good football team," Smith said. “It’s kind of as simple as that."
Even the die-hards that point to the fact that Tony Dungy got off to a miserable start in his first season in Tampa Bay have to be starting to wonder if Smith really is the answer. Take the 56-14 loss to Atlanta in September and put the Baltimore loss on top of it and you’ve got convincing evidence that the Bucs are a bad football team.
It’s significant to remember that the Bucs were very aggressive in free agency. Smith and general manager Jason Licht said several times over that they were aiming to win right away because it wasn’t fair to ask the fan base to be patient any longer. That made fans think the losing was over. But the Bucs on Sunday didn’t look any better than the product former coach Greg Schiano put on the field the past couple of years.
"We're not as talented as we need to be in some areas," Smith said. “But, at the same time, in the areas where we are talented, it’s all kind of snowballed a little bit. We're taking our moments not to play our best ball. It's a combination. It starts with coaching. It starts with how we’re playing, but you don’t change course. We have been very disappointed in two football games that we’ve played, where we just haven’t looked like ourselves. Besides that, there still are good things looking at the overall picture."
Yeah, but it’s hard to get excited about close losses to Carolina, St. Louis and New Orleans and a victory against a Pittsburgh team that got shellacked by Cleveland on Sunday. It’s hard to get excited after you’ve seen Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco throw for five touchdowns and barely get touched by the Tampa Bay defense, which was supposed to be a strength under Smith.
"We took a step back today," defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said. "Just being honest, being one of the leaders, here’s the thing, people are going to try to say it’s this or it’s that. No, no, no. We have to stop thinking and being one way. We have to just say what it is. We’re just not as good as we should be at this point. That’s the facts. We’re just not as good as we should be."
No, the Bucs aren’t as good as they should be. They’re not even close. It doesn’t help that Smith spent much of the past week talking about how improved his team was. He still stood by it even after the loss.
"I can’t explain what happened today," Smith said. "I’m going on what I’ve seen in practice, how we played last week, how we played the week before. That said, we’re getting better. Today, we didn’t take a step forward."
The Bucs better take a step forward soon or else Smith’s autumn is going to turn to winter in a hurry.
