What if Tom Brady Never Plays for the Bucs?
It started as the team's official hashtag a few years back, but it's since become the sullen mantra for fans of one of the NFL's most snake-bitten franchises.
"It's a Bucs life."
What does it mean?
It means losing the first 26 games of your existence.
It means spending the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft on someone who hates you so much, he'd rather play a different sport.
It means having the No. 6 pick when Troy Aikman, Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas and Deion Sanders go in the top five.
It means watching Doug Williams and Steve Young become Super Bowl legends for other teams.
It means passing on Adrian Peterson and Aaron Rodgers.
It means holding the Greatest Show on Turf to 11 points in the NFC title game, but only scoring six.
That's why, for most Bucs fans, it was completely preposterous that Tom Brady would leave behind a 20-year legacy in New England, just so he could sign with them. There's no way the GOAT would choose them, right? Even after it became clear that Brady would be leaving the Patriots and playing elsewhere in 2020, the Tampa Bay faithful assumed he would land somewhere else, anywhere else.
But he didn't go to Tennessee to play for a former teammate. He didn't go to Los Angeles, where he just started a production company. He didn't go to San Francisco, the place he dreamed of playing as a kid.
No, Brady came to Tampa.
Brady's signing was the golden ticket in Tampa Bay's banner offseason, which included the subsequent luring of Rob Gronkowski out of retirement to join his former teammate. Adding that dynamic duo to an already promising roster that includes the NFL's reigning sack leader and a pair of Pro Bowl wide receivers had the Bucs immediately getting Super Bowl hype.
The Bucs' defense was a top-five unit in the NFL over the last six weeks of the 2019 season, and they kept the band together this offseason, re-signing Jason Pierre-Paul and Ndamukong Suh, and placing the franchise tag on Shaq Barrett. They led the league in rushing defense last year, and their young secondary made huge strides in the second half of the season.
Throw in an experienced coaching staff that had next to nothing in terms of turnover this offseason, and you've got a team ready to make a championship run with Brady at the helm.
But what if it never happens?
What if, despite the NFL's best efforts, the COVID-19 pandemic claims the 2020 season?
Training camps are scheduled to start at the end of this month, but there are still huge questions that have yet to be answered about the league's plan to keep players, coaches and staff safe as positive cases of the virus continue to rise in various locations throughout the country. Other professional sports leagues are in the process of starting up again, but workouts, practices and games have already seen postponements and cancellations due to positive cases, despite efforts to maintain a "bubble" of safety.
Players in other sports have already decided to opt-out of their league's abbreviated seasons, and it won't be surprising to see NFL players start to join that chorus in the coming weeks.
Major college conferences are already cancelling non-conference games, and there's doubt that college football will have a fall season at all.
It may seem impossible to believe that the NFL season could be completely cancelled, but the current health crisis has made the abnormal normal for months now.
And if that happens, could the thrill of Tampa Bay's star-studded offseason simply fade into another footnote in the Bucs' long legacy of what-ifs?
Sure, Brady inked a two-year deal with the Bucs, and sure sounded in March like he wasn't planning on being done after that, either. But a lot can happen in a year, especially for a 20-year NFL veteran who would be coming off a full year without football at 44 years old. Would anyone be terribly shocked if Brady decided to ride off into the sunset at that point, opting to leave his legacy in New England to stand on its own, his gold jacket and Canton bust already long secured?
Ask the nearest creamsicle-bleeding pewter pirate, and they'll tell you it would make perfect sense. See, this team can't have nice things, they'll say. And at that point, it would be impossible to argue with them.
If that happens, the glory days of Brooks and Sapp and Barber and Lynch will look even more like the exception to the rule, a Lombardi Trophy that feels like little more than a blind pig's acorn.
A Bucs life, indeed.
