The Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicked off their 2024 offseason program Monday with the first round of voluntary workouts, as they prepare to chase a fourth straight NFC South title and fifth consecutive trip to the playoffs.
Despite being picked by most national outlets to be among the NFL’s worst teams last season, the Bucs not only won the division yet again, but enjoyed a dominant playoff win at home over the Philadelphia Eagles, and fell just eight points shy of making a trip to the NFC title game.
As they head into the 2024 campaign, head coach Todd Bowles has a clear and simple message for his team.
“Really, it’s just consistency and showing up every day and doing something, [and] not being good, but being great,” cornerback Zyon McCollum said Monday about Bowles’ message to the team. “What he means by that is just if we’re doing everything that we’re going to need to do in training camp right now, by the time we get to training camp, we’re going to be that much further ahead. It not just watching film just to watch film, it’s watching film and still treating it like you’re in season. It wasn’t that long ago that we were in this building in the season fighting for a playoff spot, fighting to get to the Super Bowl, so we can’t lose that fire, that intensity. We can stack these years instead of starting over every year.”
Tampa Bay was able to retain their most important in-house free agents this offseason, and made a handful of solid veteran additions to improve their depth on both sides of the ball. They’re also about to add another rookie class during next week’s 2024 NFL draft, which should bolster the roster even further.
If consistency is the message, the Bucs have been consistently the best team in their division over the past five seasons. If the message resonates, they should be able to keep that streak going.
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