Josh Freeman announced as starter

[Goober]

This week in Wisconsin will be awesome. I'm going to be laughing at all the Packer fans all week. :D

[BigBucs]

Also, does the pirate in the old Bucs logo have a name?

Bucco Bruce

This week in Wisconsin will be awesome. I'm going to be laughing at all the Packer fans all week. :D

Like that out here in DC every week being amongst these fucking Redskins fans.

[RyanLeaf16]

Way to be optimistic Leaf. I think some "fans" would rather say "I told you so" rather than eat crow and admit they were wrong.

It's not about "I told you so." I did nothing but warn people about Raheem and after the first game, everyone was ready to write me off and say I was nothing but a Gruden lover. Look at the body of work since the Dallas game.

All I said was Freeman was not overly impressive. He wasn't awful either. But, we have seen this song and dance before with young quarterbacks and they often have some success early due to a lack of tape for the other teams to watch. As soon as teams get some film on a kid, the production tends to drop. Fact is, he wasn't that impressive. Gradkowski was waaaay more impressive in his debut and he ended up faltering. I stand by what I said and if Freeman proves me wrong, I will admit it, as I have done before - I'm not ashamed to say I'm wrong - I'm just not going to let a average performance WOW me based off the fact that he is a rookie.

[Blick]

Did you see the game or are you just going by the numbers? Wasn't all that impressive. Wasn't awful either - but, not amazing by an standards.

I clicked over as often as I could during the Chiefs game. It doesn't matter what he does, you're going to nitpick and be a hater because nobody likes to be wrong. He made some big time throws, especially in the 4th quarter, and got the W. I didn't see his shaky beginning, but that should be expected for a rookie making his first NFL start. Admit it, he looked better than you thought he would.

[RyanLeaf16]

I clicked over as often as I could during the Chiefs game. It doesn't matter what he does, you're going to nitpick and be a hater because nobody likes to be wrong. He made some big time throws, especially in the 4th quarter, and got the W. I didn't see his shaky beginning, but that should be expected for a rookie making his first NFL start. Admit it, he looked better than you thought he would.

I have admitted I was wrong before plenty of times on MM. But, I am not going to let one AVERAGE game get me to drink the kool-aid and come on here apologizing.

Look at Mark Sanchez and how he started the season to the body of work he has put together since. He experienced some early success and then hit a wall as soon as NFL teams had some tape on him. All I'm saying is that Freeman played better than I had expected, which I already said in an earlier post in the gameday thread, but, I wouldn't be shocked to see him regress a little. Tony Banks threw 3 touchdowns in his NFL debut too...some of you guys are just the opposite. You have a hard-on to try and prove people wrong that you start making arguments after one game.

Same Bucs fans that were calling me a hater after week 1 when I said don't be fooled by the score and the stats against Dallas were nowhere to be found the following 6 weeks. I'll wait to see what he does over a significant stretch of games before I start annointing him a savior.

[Senser81]

Freeman did below-average for a normal QB, but well for a rookie. i thought TBs special teams kept them in the game the first half with the punt return TD, and they gave Freeman some short fields with some good returns. Freeman basically lost the game with his INT to AJ Hawk, but Tony Morelli's crew bailed out Freeman with a chintzy defensive holding call (the same crew that flagged James Jones for 'excessive celebration' for praying after a 76-yard TD).

Freeman did looked composed when his protection broke down, which is more than I can say for Rodgers.