Buccaneers
Buccaneers first-round WR Emeka Egbuka dropped a potential touchdown in their 24-20 loss to the Saints in Week 14. Tampa Bay OC Josh Grizzard said they haven’t lost any confidence in the rookie receiver.
“I don’t even think it’s really confidence — he’s a very confident guy,” Grizzard said, via NFL.com. “What we’ve asked him to do [as a] rookie gets taken for granted a lot — even from the coaching staff. It’s not easy to do what he’s done o
Saints
Former Saints DB Tyrann Mathieu is a believer in Saints second-round QB Tyler Shough and thinks the team should continue to build around him instead of looking for another quarterback.
“He showed me something today!!!” Mathieu wrote, via Saints Wire. “His numbers won’t wow you but it’s the critical situation football he’s winning! This city should absolutely get behind him & embrace him as QB for (the) next decade!!”
Panthers
The Panthers are 7-6 and tied for the lead in the NFC South with the Buccaneers. Carolina HC Dave Canales said they have to approach each of their remaining four games as if they were championships.
“All of them, every single one from the beginning of the season,” Canales said, via Darin Gantt of the team’s site. “I understand how important every single game is as you get to this point in the season, and so you really can’t look past any game. Every game is a championship opportunity, just like the one we have in front of us. And we have to maintain that heightened focus and awareness of how important they are. There’s nothing worse than over the years you get through a season, and you look back, maybe you squeak in a wild card berth, or maybe you win the division, but you didn’t get the seeding that you could have because of a game that got away from you earlier in the season. It’s why it’s easy for me to sell that to the group to say, hey, every game is a championship opportunity, and we have one right in front of us on the road against a familiar opponent.”
Carolina is going into Week 15 with a completely healthy roster. Canales highly praised vice president of player health and performance Denny Kellington, and director of performance Josh Hingst.
“This is where I can give Josh Hingst and Denny Kellington a lot of credit for the conversations we’ve had coming into the season, knowing when the bye week was going to be,” Canales said. “We didn’t have any Thursday games where you get a pseudo-bye after some of those, and you have to take care of the guys going into the game, but we had to be smart about that. We had to see what team we were working with. We’ve had some bumps and bruises along the way, some longer-term injuries that affect that part of it. But we had to modify, we had to make adjustments, every day going into practice. What’s the group that we have available if we scale this back? Who can we get out there to get those reps? He may not be able to handle two full periods of full-speed reps, but if we bring it down on this period, can we get him out there for reps and things like that?”
n playing all three positions. He’s a guy that came in here from day one and has prepared the right way. He’s played all three spots. He’s won games for us. We have all the confidence in the world in him. We’re going to try to get it to him early, often, with the game on the line — which he’s proven he can do. No one’s more upset with him than himself.”
Egbuka took accountability for the critical drop.
“I’m on this team for one reason, and that’s to catch the ball, and I didn’t,” Egbuka said.
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