The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 1-0, but it came at a huge cost in the form of star safety Antoine Winfield Jr.'s health. It was reported Monday that Winfield Jr. will miss the next few weeks with a high ankle sprain, leaving the Bucs with a massive hole at the safety position and on defense, in general.
“He got hurt on one of the last two plays of the game in regulation," Bucs head coach Todd Bowles told reporters on Monday. "He was on the onside [kick] team and he couldn’t go out there for the onside [kick] team."
The injury itself is enough of a blow. Winfield Jr. is the best defender on the team and one of the top-5 players on the whole roster. But, on top of that, the Bucs have also lost not one, not two, but three cornerbacks since Sunday's contest.
Veteran corner Bryce Hall suffered a gruesome injury and is likely out for the year. Zyon McCollum was ruled out of the game in the first half after he was concussed. Finally, second-year corner Josh Hayes had X-rays done on Monday morning and the results should be revealed on Wednesday, if not sooner.
Those injuries, along with Winfield Jr.'s, have left the cornerback group in a really bad spot heading into Week 2 against the Detroit Lions. Bowles said Monday Christian Izien, who played on the outside in Week 1, would slide over to safety if Winfield Jr. missed time. Now that is officially in the cards, it leaves the Bucs' cornerback room with hardly any healthy bodies.
Therefore, if none of the aforementioned corners are able to go on Sunday, the Bucs' starting corners would be Jamel Dean and Tyrek Funderburk. Rookie Tykee Smith would play nickel and there would be zero, yes zero, true corners backing them up. At safety, your likely looking at Jordan Whitehead and Tavierre Thomas as the starters with Kaevon Merriweather and Izien as the backups. Unless the team promotes Marcus Banks to safety in order to put Izien back on the outside or at nickel behind Smith, there's no one else on the roster that can help.
It's pretty obvious the Bucs are going to bring in some outside help or else the Lions are going to rip the secondary to shreds on Sunday. Sure, the Lions' receiver corps is very lackluster after you get past Amon St. Brown, but it's more Ben Johnson's scheme, than anything, that will get the job done. It's a complicated scheme that honestly requires a level of communication and experience that the Bucs' current depth guys don't have to be effective against. No matter how comfortable the staff feels with them out there.
The first name that comes to mind is Keenan Isaac, an outsider but also an insider who had a solid training camp with the Bucs. That's the kind of guy the Bucs need to bring in because if they bring in a guy who isn't familiar with the system, it'll take him a couple of weeks to learn the playbook and get acclimated, which in turn will either prevent him from getting on the field or will limit his snaps. With the injuries, outside Hall's and potentially Hayes', they seem to be more of the short-term range, like 2-4 weeks. Therefore, the outsider that was once an insider is the move the Bucs need to make.
Either way, the Bucs need really need to be proactive on this one and not wait to see how things play out over the course of the next few days. This is a huge NFC matchup that will certainly have playoff ramifications down the line. It's not something to wait on.
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