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| The Buccaneers players who went on the record Wednesday support Greg Schiano. (US Presswire) |
According to a report earlier this week, the Buccaneers are not a very happy squad. More specifically, as one anonymous player told Pro Football Talk, they’re not pleased with Greg Schiano’s coaching style.
"Can we send these coaches back to college?" the player reportedly said.
Combine that with the brief sideline dust-up last Sunday between linebacker Adam Hayward and defensive assistant coach Bryan Cox, and you have to wonder if the locker room is falling apart.
Apparently, the answer to that is no. An emphatic no.
"Somebody said what?” safety Ronde Barber asked the Tampa Tribune when told about the PFT report. "That's a [expletive] made-up quote. No one in this locker room said that. I can promise you that.”
PFT stood by its report in an email to the Tribune. When asked about it, Schiano laughed and said he’d already graduated from college and didn’t need to return. Hayward also disputed the report that the team wasn’t happy with the staff.
"If that were the case, the guys here would have shut it down already and not practiced hard, but today we had a great practice," Hayward said Wednesday. "Everybody was flying around and hitting, getting to the ball.
"You can see the guys are ready to play, ready to work. That other stuff, that can stay on the Internet where it belongs. But in this locker room, I can see it in the guys' eyes. They want to play football; that's why they're here.''
It’s certainly not out of the question that one player -- or perhaps a faction of the team -- isn’t happy with Schiano, but you’ll also find some kind of dissension on just about every football team in existence. That doesn’t mean Schiano has lost his team; personally, I like the direction in which the Buccaneers are headed.
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