Awards, Injuries, Et Al

As expected, Bryant and Barber won NFC Player of the Week honors for Special Teams and Defense, respectively. Those were, of course, "duh!" type awards, and were well deserved. In the meantime, Brian Kelly was place on IR and is lost for the season. The impact of losing him will be felt, as it already has been, by lesser tackling. Bolden has been doing a pretty good job covering, especially in the last two games, but he still tends to be further off the receiver than I would like, and his tackling isn't nearly as good as Kelly's, though it has gotten better the last two weeks.

Going forward the Bucs will need to get either Zemaitis or Buchanon ready to play in case another corner goes out. I think Zemaitis can play like Kelly but he still has a lot to learn about the defense. Buchanon can play, but his tackling is probably on the same level as Bolden. Of course, what's killing this defense more is the safety play, and I don't think the Bucs have anywhere they can turn to at this point in time. They will be facing another high powered defense this weekend, so let's hope they practice tackling until it becomes natural again. Maybe having 500+ yards put on their butts will kick them into gear. Or, they might be that bad (even though they were number 1 last year). We'll see.