It’s been a few days since the Patriots game, and I’m still walking around like someone stole my Sunday and replaced it with a therapy bill. You tell yourself, “it’s just one loss.” But this one didn’t feel like just anything. It felt heavier. Slower. Louder.
Because we’ve lost before — God knows we’ve lost before — but that one hit different. That one felt personal. It wasn’t just a scoreboard problem; it was a vibe problem. It was watching our rhythm collapse in real time. It was the kind of game that makes you question if the spark’s still there — in them, in us, in everything.
And now? We’ve got the Bills. Josh Allen and his chaos of kindness.
He plays like a linebacker with a quarterback problem — a human storm wrapped in politeness. He’ll stiff-arm your safety into a highlight reel, then help him up like he’s checking on a fallen friend. He plays nasty, but he kills you with kindness while he’s doing it. And that’s what scares me most. I can handle getting steamrolled — I can’t handle getting complimented while it’s happening.
Two weeks in a row of that? Terrifying.
We’re sitting in the midseason fog — that dangerous stretch where the energy dips, the legs get heavy, and belief starts to wobble. The optimism of September feels like it was written by a different person. Now it’s November, and every drive feels like a test of willpower. You can sense the fatigue, the frustration, the ghosts of every “almost” game whispering from seasons past.
Meanwhile, somehow the Panthers — the Panthers! — are three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dusting everyone into submission. No flash, no fireworks, just handoff after handoff until defenses tap out. It’s prehistoric football, and it’s working. I hate it. I respect it. But mostly, I’m jealous. They’re grinding teams down while we’re out here trying to remember what rhythm feels like.
Still — there’s never a second thought of not believing. Because I bleed the Bucs.
That’s not a slogan. That’s muscle memory. That’s years of surviving football trauma and calling it character development.
We’ve already walked through the fire. We survived Jameis Winston’s “30-for-30” season — a weekly high-wire act where touchdowns and turnovers came in pairs, like chaos had a production schedule. We survived Josh Freeman’s disappearing act, where one day he was the future and the next day he was folklore. We’ve lined up behind quarterbacks whose names sound like random character-creation defaults.
You don’t live through that kind of madness and come out cautious. You come out addicted to belief.
So yeah, I’m still gutted. Still ticked. Still replaying missed throws in my head like I could fix them with pure spite. But when that first spark hits — when a tipped ball turns into an interception, or a strip-sack changes the tempo — I’ll still scream “LET’S FUCKING GO!” and run laps around my living room like we just rewrote destiny. Down two scores? Don’t care. I’ll believe again instantly. Because with Baker, we usually are right back in it.
That’s the thing about this team — they don’t make it easy, but they always make it interesting. Baker plays like every snap owes him money. He’s got that walk-on grit, that chip on his shoulder that could take down a tree. Every time I think I’m out, he does something reckless and fearless that yanks me straight back in.
Hope, in Tampa, isn’t optimism. It’s survival instinct. It’s how we cope with the chaos. We don’t believe because it’s smart — we believe because it’s who we are.
And yeah, I’m scared of Buffalo. Scared of Josh Allen smiling through another highlight reel, scared of déjà vu, scared of hope running on fumes. But fear doesn’t mean doubt. It means you care. It means you’re still in the fight.
If we get beat again, I know we’ll bounce back. We always do. That’s the one consistent thing about this franchise — resilience wrapped in insanity. We take the hits, we spit blood, we reload. That’s not fandom. That’s faith in pads.
Because being a Bucs fan isn’t about winning every week — it’s about showing up when you shouldn’t. It’s about yelling at the TV when logic says turn it off. It’s about blind loyalty that feels like madness until it pays off — and then it feels like destiny.
We’re bruised, not broken. We’re tired, not finished. We’ll take our punches, swallow the frustration, and still walk into Sunday swinging.
Because that’s what it means to bleed pewter. You don’t flinch. You don’t hedge. You don’t wonder if it’s worth it — you already know it is.
We’ll bounce back, whether it’s this week or the next, because we always do. And when we do, when that fire hits again, every doubt will vanish like it never existed.
So yeah, I’m still gutted. Still yelling. Still believing. Not because it’s logical — but because it’s inevitable.
There’s never a second thought of not believing. Not after one loss. Not after two. Not ever.
Because I bleed the Bucs — and that means I’ll believe until the final cannon fires.
