Why Tom Brady thinks the 2022 Bucs will be the best yet
Despite all the challenges that came with the 2020 NFL season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers still managed to navigate them all the way to a Super Bowl victory, in Tom Brady’s first year as their quarterback.
While the Bucs made the playoffs that year as a wild-card team, rattling off eight straight victories to finish the season (including three straight road playoff wins), the 2021 season was somewhat the opposite. Tampa Bay rolled through most of the regular season, winning the NFC South for the first time in more than a decade, but suffered a disappointing exit in the second round of the playoffs.
Heading into his third season with the team, Brady believes this year’s version of the Bucs should be the best yet.
“We’re challenged right out of the box this year,” Brady recently told the media. “We’ve got really good teams [on our schedule]. We’ve got to have a great training camp. We know when training camp is – it’s the 23rd of July (for quarterbacks). We know we’ve got six weeks of training camp, but I feel like it starts [now]. Obviously, the season has already started – you are competing every day out there. You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. You’re not going out there just to break a sweat, you are going out there to get things done.”
“I think this should be, in my opinion, our best opportunity to play our best football because we’ve been together the longest,” Brady continued. “Why shouldn’t it be? We know each other, we know the scheme, we’ve been through a lot of challenging circumstances in games and now we’ve got to go out there and execute it as well as we possibly can.”
Brady is coming off a season in which he led the NFL in pass attempts, passing yards and touchdown passes. Despite losing some key starters this offseason on both sides of the ball, the Bucs have reloaded with some key veteran additions, as well as another promising rookie class.
While the schedule does look daunting, and it’s still unclear when Pro Bowl wide receiver Chris Godwin will return from last year’s season-ending knee injury, there’s no reason to believe the Bucs won’t be a Super Bowl contender again this year.
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Bucs' biggest position battles for the 2022 season
