TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are taking training camp on the road this week. The team held on final practice at One Buc Place on Monday morning before catching a flight to New Jersey.
The Bucs saw a fair amount of quarterback Aaron Rodgers when he played with the Green Bay Packers. Now, they’ll get a look at him in his new uniform. Tampa Bay will play the New York Jets in their second preseason game on Saturday. But before that, they will have a joint practice with the Jets on Wednesday.
“It will be good to get some situational football done against someone besides ourselves,” Bucs’ coach Todd Bowles said. “We need a lot of work. We need to see different things. Everybody gets stuck in a rut camp-wise. It will be good to go up against somebody else. It will be good work.”
The Bucs rested 15 expected starters in their first preseason game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Bowles said that this practice with the Jets will be more beneficial since it will feature more starter-on-starter action.
“You put a lot in because you are playing your first-teamers,” Bowles said. “You get them ready for the season quite a bit. You know you’re going to see everything for the season as opposed to games where it will be vanilla football. You don’t get what you would normally see on certain down and distances.”
Tampa Bay knows a thing or two about buzz, national attention, and high expectations when Tom Brady joined the team in 2020. With Rodgers at quarterback, the Jets are now in that same situation.
“They have Aaron, and they have to deal with that,” Bowles said. “We’re just trying to get better. We’re not making it a comparison thing. We’re trying to get some work in.”
The Bucs were expecting two joint practices with the Jets, but instead, the Jets made the call to only have one practice together. Tampa Bay will practice by themselves on Thursday and hold a walk-through on Friday.
