It’s unfair to say that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers need to make the playoffs if head coach Raheem Morris realistically expects to keep his job beyond the 2010 season, but it is probably safe to say that the Buccaneers need to win at least six games and remain competitive throughout the course of the entire ‘10 season. Morris knows that he won’t survive the chopping block if his team were to go 3-13 again. That’s why training camp is off to an intense start for the Buccaneers, as they try to mold their slew of young players into game-ready warriors come early Septemeber.
Morris joined WDAE in Tampa Bay to talk about his job security, Warren Sapp spending time working with some of the young defenders on the team, and a number of other interesting topics. I’ve included a few choice tidbits from the interview.
On Warren Sapp’s involvement with the young players on the team:
“Warren, make no mistakes about it, he is always going to be a teacher. Warren Sapp is an excellent teacher. You may not like his tactics but he is excellent teacher and if you sit down and listen he is probably saying the right things. I remember being a quality control coach and when Warren would get into the building and he talked everybody didn’t like what he had to say but a lot of times he was telling the truth. You have got heat to that and right now he has talked to these young men and they are talking back and they are able to listen and gain some knowledge from. Any time you can get that from that type of guy it is awesome. Speaking of excellence, we were able to bring in Angelo Dundee in here to our training camp and he is able to come in and see some of our football team and talk to our team, whenever you can surround yourself with that type of knowledge, that type of people, you have no choice but to get better.”
On what the number one lesson he learned last season will bring with him into this season:
“The beauty of it is that it is all blown up, everybody is 0-0. The number one thing that you bring into it is the angry, working mentality that we always talk about. Ronde Barber is the greatest example of them all. I always tell people all of the time that he is still pissed off that he wasn’t drafted in the first round, he is still angry that he wasn’t elected to every Pro Bowl, he is still angry that he didn’t start his first year, he is still angry that the Bucs tried to replace him with a different corner every year. He is still angry that he wasn’t the highest-paid corner in the National Football League for the last nine years and that is what keeps him going right now. He is still angry that people say what he can’t do, he is still angry that he is thirty-five playing football and he loves that and he thrives in that. That is what this whole team has to feed off of and take that angry, working mentality and put it into the football field and apply it and go out there angry as we race to ten.”