Pewter Pulse: THE BUCS’ FINAL TEST They Must Pass To Truly Be Great

Pewter Pulse: THE BUCS’ FINAL TEST They Must Pass To Truly Be Great

Hello pewer people. Scott Reynolds here with another Pewer Pulse. The Bucks are 5- one and heading into a huge game on Monday Night Football up in Detroit against the 4-2 Lions. Now, this won’t be Tampa Bay’s last big game of the season. After the bye-week, they’ve got some road games in LA against the Rams and at Buffalo against the Bills coming up along with a rematch against the Falcons and a couple games against some improving teams like the Panthers and the Patriots. But there is one big final test that the Bucks need to pass this season. And a win in the Motor City on Monday night will have proved that they’ve aced it. Now, I’ll reveal what that test is in just a moment. But first, a reminder, hit the thumbs up button on this video, give it a like. Also, leave a comment. I love reading your comments. And doing those two things gets our videos out in the YouTube algorithm and gets us in front of more awesome Bucks fans like you. Make sure you head over to Peter Report TV, our YouTube channel. Hit subscribe. We’re on the way to 22,000 thanks to you and also visit peterreport.com for all the Bucks news that you’re going to want to read. Okay, the Bucks have got to match the Lions physicality in order to win in Detroit on Monday night, but they also have to elevate their mindset and prove that they can handle the expectations of being the media darlings right now. That’s a big mental hurdle that young teams must learn to get over if they want to advance deep into the playoffs and ultimately make the Super Bowl. Everybody loves Tampa Bay right now, especially after beating a couple of fellow NFC contenders in Seattle and San Francisco. The Bucks are the number one team at topmost power rankings and Baker Mayfield is the MVP front runner. and achabuka is the front runner for the NFL offensive rookie of the year honors. More Bucks players are popping up on Pat McAfee and up in Adams and various NFL network and ESPN shows as well as the Fox and NBC and CBS broadcasts. The more exposure that a team gets, the higher the risk of distraction. players can start reading about how good they are in these various national media outlets and see adorning clips of themselves all over social media. It’s easy for young players to buy into the hype and take their eye off the prize, thinking that they’ve arrived. I’ve seen this firsthand a few times in my 30 years of covering this team. The 1997 Bucks were the breakout team in the NFL that year under Tony Dunie. And many media outlets predicted that Tampa Bay would be a Super Bowl favorite the next year with stars like Warren Sap and Derek Brooks, Hardy Nickerson, John Lynch, Mike Ol, and Warrick Dunn. Instead, the Bucks believe their own hype and underwhelmed, finishing with the disappointing 8-8 record and missing the playoffs. The same thing happened after Raheem Morris’s younger Bucks went 10-6 and just missed the playoffs in 2010. They assumed they would be a great team in 2011 and it looked like it early with a 4-2 record to start that year, but then the Bucks got terribly complacent and they fractured during a losing streak that lasted 10 straight games and that led to Morris getting fired at the end of that 4 and2 campaign. The Lions have become one of the best teams in the NFC in recent years. From narrowly missing the playoffs in 2022 with a 9-8 record to a breakthrough 2023 season in which they finished 12-5 and nearly made it to the Super Bowl, losing to the 49ers in the NFC Championship game. Detroit simply ran out of healthy bodies on defense last year. And despite an NFL best 15-2 record, the Lions lost to the Commanders at home in the divisional round of the playoffs. But during the 2023 season, head coach Dan Campbell and the Lions learned how to handle expectations and assume success. You see, Detroit doesn’t think it’s going to win. It knows it’s going to win. Now, it doesn’t happen every week because no team is perfect, but the Lions have the perfect mentality. And that’s the mentality that this Bucks franchise has had in some memorable seasons such as 1999, 2002, 2020, and 2021. Tampa Bay is on the cusp of getting that mentality this year. And that mentality is best described as transitioning from being the hunter to becoming the hunted. This Tampa Bay team has championship talent. Now it just needs a championship mentality. I think this team has the right leadership to make this transition to go from being the hunter to becoming the hunted and becoming able to handle those higher expectations and being able to manage the distractions that naturally come with it. It starts at the top with Todd BS whose leadership is as steady as a rock and whose calm demeanor is perfect for the situation. Then you got a leader like Baker Mayfield who has the supreme confidence to instill belief throughout the entire team. Being the hunted means you have the bullseye on your back. Is there any current NFL player who has had a bullseye on his back more than Mayfield dating back to his Heisman Trophy days at at Oklahoma and then being the number one pick in Cleveland. Throw in some Super Bowl champions who have been there and done that like Mike Evans, Levante David, Vea, Chris Godwin Jr., Antoine Winfield Jr., Tristan Warfs, and Jamal Dean. And I think this Bucks team can get over that mental hurdle at some point this year, hopefully on Monday night. This game presents the perfect opportunity for the Bucks to show the maturity, to embrace the expectations, shrug off the distractions, and to show the Lions that Tampa Bay is no longer the hunter by winning in Detroit. Now, a loss to the Lions on Monday night doesn’t quite mean that the Bucks can’t pass this test this season. It just means that Tampa Bay isn’t quite ready to leap over that final mental hurdle just yet. And it also would mean that the Lions aren’t quite ready to let other teams take over the NFC supremacy just yet either. It took the Bucks until the by-week in the 2020 season with Tom Brady when this team was seven and five until it truly learned how to dominate, winning the last four games of that year and then ultimately four more, including the Super Bowl. That expectation of winning carried over into the next season in 2021 when the Bucks had a franchise best 13 wins. Now, Tampa Bay’s already checked off a lot of boxes this year, a lot of important boxes. It proved it can overcome a litany of injuries on a weekly basis. It’s proven it can win in prime time. It’s proven that it can beat a longtime NFC nemesis in San Francisco. It’s proven that it can win on the road in a hostile environment like Seattle. Now, the Bucks need to prove that they are mature enough to wear the bullseye and truly learn to expect to win, even in the biggest moments against the best of teams. Let’s see if the Bucks can get over that mental hurdle on Monday night, or if they’ll have to wait a little bit, maybe beating the Rams later this year or the Bills to truly learn how to become the hunted on the way to becoming champions. Folks, we love all of the fact that gosh, we’re on the way to 22,000 subscribers. That’s got us so excited over here. If you have not subscribed to Pewer Report TV yet, do so. It’s where you can find my Peter Pulse videos, my Bucks Brightside videos, my appearances on the Pewer Pregame show, which will come up at 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning prior to that Lions game on Monday night, as well as the Pewer Report podcast four times a week, including our postgame podcast after every game. Make sure you follow us on X, Facebook, and Instagram at peterreport. And please visit petwarreport.com for all of the breaking news, injury reports, the latest roster moves, the game coverage that you want. Plus, I’ve got some columns over there. My SRS Fab 5 column every Friday, my Bucks mailbag after every Bucks game, as well as my two-point conversion postgame column. And I’ll be back soon with a new Pewer Pulse.

The 5-1 Bucs have a HUGE game on Monday Night Football at Detroit vs. the 4-2 Lions. Tampa Bay must match Detroit’s physicality in order to win, but the Bucs must also pass a big test in the Motor City if they want to become a championship-caliber team this season. Scott Reynolds reveals what that big test is in a new Pewter Pulse video.

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