“We Didn’t Do Enough”
September 16th, 2026

Bucs needed more.

As we begin to turn the page from Week 1 towards Week 2, the Bucs’ home opener against the Browns, Joe was going through some of his notes from the locker room after the Bucs lost to the Bengals.

Now Joe isn’t buying the theory that because the Bucs didn’t play enough snaps in worthless preseason games it hurt the team — how the hell did the Bucs ever win a Super Bowl in 2020 without any of these atrocities being forced upon innocent Americans?

Did the Bengals have seven worthless preseason games that Joe isn’t aware of?

Zyon McCollum made a point to Joe that sort of makes sense. The Bucs had six new starters on defense with one of those starters playing a new position. A’Shawn Robinson, Alex Anzalone, Josiah Trotter, Rueben Bain and Keionte Scott were all new starters that were not on the roster last year.

Jacob Parrish did start at nickel last year and Sunday he started at outside corner.

McCollum told Joe there is a difference between worthless preseason games and the games that count.

“First time playing a real type of football with the bullets flying with some new teammates,” McCollum told Joe. “We will continue to build that cohesion.”

Practice is not worthless preseason and worthless preseason is not the regular season. While the Bucs defense got a lot of snaps in practice with their new starting defense, but it’s a whole different thing knowing how your teammate on the other side of the line will play and not knowing what Joe Burrow and Co. will be doing.

“It was a one-score game where we didn’t play up to our standards,” McCollum told Joe, not really acknowledging how the offense played Santa Claus with the football. “It lets us know we have something here.”

McCollum didn’t want to hear from anyone about work or effort.

“It doesn’t matter how hard we play,” McCollum said. “If we lose, we didn’t do enough.”

Joe heard that from more than one player. The defense, though it played well enough to win, didn’t do enough. If the offense is sputtering, the defense needs to take measures to help out their teammates.