Captain Fear
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- Mar 20, 2019
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Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston‘s future is in doubt as he’s quarterbacked Tampa Bay to a 2-5 record in this, the fifth and final year of his rookie contract. But his offensive coordinator doesn’t want him to go anywhere.
Tampa Bay offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich told the Tampa Bay Times he believes Winston is the Bucs’ best option in 2020.
That, of course, isn’t up to Leftwich. The front office may disagree, and Winston may also want to see what his options are in free agency. The Buccaneers could prevent Winston from testing the waters by putting the franchise tag on him, but the franchise tag for quarterbacks next year is expected to be about $27 million, and so far this season, Winston hasn’t looked worthy of that kind of deal.
At least, that’s how it looks to most on the outside, but Leftwich is adamant that if a couple of breaks had gone the Bucs’ way, their record would be better and the perceptions of Winston would be different.
“It’s four or five plays here or there that you’ve just got to really change and get out of our system just as a team, really,” Leftwich said. “That comes to winning the football games. If you win some of the games that you lost, it’s all different, right? The narrative is all different. So we’ve got to understand that, try to fix those plays and hopefully when we have the opportunity in the future, that we make those plays to win football games.”
If some of those breaks go the other way down the stretch, Winston can change perceptions, and perhaps earn himself a lucrative second contract in Tampa. But if Winston and the Bucs keep playing as they have so far, it seems likely that Tampa Bay will be looking for a new quarterback in a few months.