Jeff Garcia sarà il QB titolare di Tampa raola di Gruden.
Gruden has settled on his starting quarterback.
It's Jeff Garcia.
Gruden began to spill the beans a week ago.
"There's not a lot of controversy in my eyes right now," Gruden said at a speaking engagement in the Tampa area last Friday. "If you want to catch up to Jeff Garcia, our young quarterbacks have a lot of work to do."
As only the overcaffeinated and prone-to-hyperbole Gruden can do, he did a little more spilling.
“And right now Jeff Garcia has a big lead, to me, on the quarterback position,” he said. “He brings a lot of juice and enthusiasm to our offensive team.”
Don’t hold back, Coach Chucky.
“Jeff Garcia is clearly the leader in the clubhouse right now, and we’re excited about that.”
Garcia is the starter. Got it?
Apparently some people didn’t. So the next day Gruden made his announcement official at the team’s annual FanFest.
“Jeff is the starting quarterback on this football team and at some point we’ve got to make it public,” Gruden said. “I don’t want to speculate any further than (to say) Jeff Garcia is far and away the best quarterback on our team at this point.”
Garcia was the best quarterback on the Bucs when they signed him in March. Sure, the Bucs gave us a song and dance when they signed the 37-year-old Garcia that he would compete for the starting gig with Chris Simms, Bruce Gradkowski and Luke McCown in training camp.
But we knew that wasn’t true. We knew Gruden brought Garcia to Tampa to fix his mistakes last season after Simms suffered a ruptured spleen. It was Gruden’s mishandling of the QB position (i.e., sticking with Gradkowski, then a rookie, for too long) that sealed the Bucs’ 4-12 fate.
Gruden, who has had three losing campaigns in the five seasons since he led the Bucs to victory in Super Bowl XXXVII, can’t afford another sub-.500 record. That’s why Garcia was his best option — his only option, really.