They didn't continue a winless season. They didn't give up 50-plus points. They didn't let an opposing player turn a third-and-33 play into a 52-yard touchdown. In their brawl, nobody got a reverse choke slam.
The Buccaneers still were not lucky enough to slip under the radar Sunday — they only lost, 30-10, to the Saints — and now their terrible season can't be brushed off as a slow start or a bump in the road.
The Bucs are 2-6 at the halfway point of the season. The expectations of playoff contention are gone, and everything is up for debate, including the head coach’s future and the franchise quarterback’s progress.
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Also up for debate is that quarterback's motivational choices, as much of an uncomfortable nation witnessed Sunday from the Superdome. If the whole finger-licking, eating-W’s routine had been the low point for Jameis Winston and the Buccaneers against the Saints, the despair would not be spreading throughout the Florida gulf coast today.
Winston managed 67 yards passing in the first half, led the Bucs to just one field goal, aggravated his shoulder injury and sat out the second half. Then he got unnecessarily mixed up in a sideline scuffle (poking at Marshon Lattimore’s head, but wisely with his non-throwing hand). With Ryan Fitzpatrick in Winston's place, the Bucs barely avoided a second straight week without a touchdown. They were down 30-3 when they scored with under seven minutes left.
Winston's progress clearly has stalled. It's not clear how much the shoulder injury from three weeks earlier has contributed. It's also not clear how any of it happened when additions like DeSean Jackson and O.J. Howard joined Mike Evans and Doug Martin to supposedly give the Bucs all the weapons they'd need.
Least clear of all is how much falls on coach Dirk Koetter's shoulders, no pun intended. He was brought there to be the Jameis whisperer, and after their first seasons in town, he was elevated to head coach to keep Winston from getting away, at the expense of Lovie Smith. So many applauded the Bucs ending the apparent blight of the Smith regime after all of two years, and an expected change in "culture" in which Winston would flourish.
Yet last week, before the loss to the Saints, Koetter told a radio station that maybe there was still a "culture" of losing.
"I thought we were over that," he said, adding, "Here we are on this losing streak. And, you know, I don’t want to believe it’s culture; I really don’t. And I'm around these guys every day. But at the same time we have lost four in a row; you can't hide from that."
WATCH: Buccaneers vs. Saints highlights
Since starting out 8-5 last season, the Bucs are 3-8. The Saints loss was their fifth straight, and the only teams in the NFL with worse records in 2017 are the winless Browns and 49ers, plus the one-win Giants. Koetter and the Giants' Ben McAdoo ought to relate well to each other — second-year coaches given credit for quick turnarounds after questionable firings of their predecessors, with steep plunges the next year.
They also were both touted as offensive gurus who aren't living up to the hype. The ceiling for Winston was considered extremely high, in their defense, but the notion that he's on a treadmill in Year 3 is powerful.
The fact that the defense has downright regressed this season despite the Bucs loading up on that side of the ball over the last two years in the draft and free agency doesn't help. Neither do the well-documented kicking woes. And neither does the fact that the general manager, Jason Licht, spanned Smith's and Koetter's tenures.
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Licht and Koetter will be judged by the Glazer family, the owners, who have not kept a head coach for longer than three years since Jon Gruden's departure in 2008. That’s four head coaches ago. The win totals for the last three coaches in their final seasons were four, four and six.
Everybody in Tampa is on the clock now.
Being better than the NFL's absolute worst can't, and shouldn't, save them.
