Buccaneers believe hurricane evacuation can bring team together for Saints game

As shared by the JoeBucsFan website, cornerback Zyon McCollum suggested earlier this week that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers having to evacuate to Tulane University in advance of Hurricane Milton could result in players becoming "closer as a group" ahead of this Sunday's game at the 2-3 New Orleans Saints.

Tampa Bay offensive coordinator Liam Coen echoed McCollum's point while speaking with reporters on Thursday.

"The guys were locked in, focused, you know, there's a good energy actually," Coen said about practices held at Tulane, according to the Buccaneers' official website. "I would say that Zyon is probably correct when he says that sometimes, these moments, these times can bring a team together."

Per Jenna Laine of ESPN, star Buccaneers players such as quarterback Baker Mayfield and wide receiver Mike Evans mentioned they wanted "to play for something a little bit bigger" than just a win against the rival Saints earlier in the week . According to a CNN update offered on Friday morning, at least 16 deaths had been attributed to Hurricane Milton as of that time.

Members of the Buccaneers locker room must do everything possible to focus on the task at hand once they enter Caesars Superdome on Sunday. Tampa Bay is coming off a brutal Week 5 36-30 overtime loss to the Atlanta Falcons, which dropped the Bucs to 3-2. Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio and others pointed out that "an obvious miss of a facemask foul late in the fourth quarter" gave the Falcons enough time to kick a last-second field goal that sent the game to overtime.

"When you're on the road and it's all of us together — our families, our players, our coaches, our staff — we're all we have right now, so we're all together," Coen continued during his comments. "We're all in this thing together and you can definitely see a sense of urgency, especially after a tough loss in a game that we felt like, you know, obviously they won, but [that] we lost in a lot of ways. How do we bounce back from that? This is a great kind of challenge for us to be able to do as a team and as an organization, to go out and put the best product on the field on Sunday."

The Saints will start rookie quarterback Spencer Rattler against the Buccaneers, with Derek Carr sidelined because of an oblique tear. As of Friday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook listed Tampa Bay as a 3.5-point favorite over New Orleans.