A knee injury last September took away 81% of Adrian Clayborn’s second NFL season, but it gave something in return: Time.

Clayborn, who suffered his season-ending ACL tear in the third game of the 2012 season, at Dallas, would have rather used the next three months to chase quarterbacks and build on his very promising 7.5-sack rookie season.  When that wasn’t an option, he did the next best thing with his sudden wealth of free time – he built himself into a more formidable player. Continue reading →

The Buccaneers currently have 89 players on their offseason roster, including RB/KR Jeff Demps, whose status hasn’t been fully clarified since the team acquired his rights from New England in a draft-weekend trade.  Of the other 88 players, not one was missing when the Buccaneers gathered for the first of their 10 allotted OTA practices on Monday.

That’s impressive, of course, but not entirely unexpected.  The OTAs are voluntary but usually draw most of the roster, at least in Tampa.  The most recent collective bargaining agreement reduced the amount of time a team can practice during the offseason, so most players want to make use of all the field work they can get.

Of those 88 players on hand at One Buccaneer Place on Monday, 85 were in practice gear and on the field for the full 100-minute session.  Starting offensive guards Davin Joseph and Carl Nicks spent that time with the team’s trainers as they near the final stages of their recoveries from knee and toe injuries, respectively.  And Darrelle Revis, the prized cornerback for which the Buccaneers traded their first-round pick a month ago, split his practice time between mental reps on the sideline and rehab work on his knee with the medical staff.

The Bucs have expressed confidence that Revis will be on the field for opening day this September – coincidentally in New York against his former team, the Jets.  To get there, they have to help him finish his recovery from last September’s injury and they have to get him comfortable in Tampa Bay’s defense.  Thus, the splitting of time between observing and rehabbing during OTA practices. Continue reading →

The very first full-speed, full-team practice snap that Akeem Spence took as an NFL player ended in a little “extracurricular activity,” as they say, a brief after-the-whistle skirmish with veteran teammate Jeremy Zuttah.

That might seem like either bad luck or bad anger management on the rookie’s part, but in reality the first snap was where this breakout was most likely to occur.  The disagreement was over proper tempo in the trenches, where “practice etiquette” is most important, and Spence learned an immediate but important lesson on behalf of all the team’s rookies. Continue reading →