High above the field, in the suites at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers GM Jason Licht was having the same thought a lot of people were watching his team. Those players and coaches, in the wake of Hurricane Milton, had been through a lot, displaced for almost a week, and living and working day to day in New Orleans, through three hotels, a college campus, and, finally, this iconic stadium.
They’d come out of the gate against the Saints like Secretariat.
But the 17–0 lead they zoomed to in the game’s first 20 minutes evaporated as quickly as it came—with a punt return accounting for one Saints score, Baker Mayfield interceptions accounting for two more, and Spencer Rattler’s first touchdown pass as a pro putting New Orleans up 20–17 midway through the second quarter.
Had the Buccaneers run out of gas? It did cross Licht’s mind. Or maybe more than just that.
“I thought it was going to be a little bit like the week, where it started out fine, nothing’s going to happen, and then the s— hits the fan.”
– Bucs GM Jason Licht
“I thought it was going to be a little bit like the week,” the GM says, “where it started out fine, nothing’s going to happen, and then the s— hits the fan.”
Which brings us to the cool part of the story of the Buccaneers’ week.
The team responded in the same way the organization had all week, rallying to turn things around, and winning in the end.
It’s always tough to draw parallels between real-life situations such as Milton and adversity in sports because they are two different things. Someone having a tree land on their house is not the same as a football team having to deal with a bad stretch of competition. But the reality is that this particular football team was faced with both things over the past 10 days.
To anyone’s reasonable expectation, they could come out feeling good about themselves on both counts. The entire operation was able to pull together, pull up stakes, and move to Louisiana for a few days while accommodating those choosing to stay behind and ride out the storm in different parts of Florida. The football team responded in kind, taking those 20 consecutive points from the Saints and answering by outscoring their hosts 34–7 the rest of the way to lock down a week-capping 51–27 rout.
“And at the end of the week,” Licht said to cap the analogy, “everything’s not as bad as we thought it was going to be.”
It took the work of a lot of people to give the GM the chance to say that, as he headed for the team plane to, finally, return home. Licht knew, too, that there were parts of Florida that wound up getting it worse than Tampa, which only underscored to him that the Bucs’ good work was met with some good fortune, too. And plenty to be thankful for in the final equation.
