Injury Updates, Takeaways from Week 5, and More Records to Set for Tom Brady

Final thoughts from last week, and first ones, for the next

As the Tampa Bay Buccaneers turn the page towards Week 6 against the Philadelphia Eagles, we get our first injury report of the new week.

Lavonte David, Rob Gronkowski, Ryan Jensen, Tom Brady, Chris Godwin, Jason Pierre-Paul, Giovani Bernard, Antonio Brown, Jamel Dean, and Ryan Succop headline a star-studded injury report for the Bucs.

For the Eagles, Derek Barnett, Dallas Goedert, Lane Johnson, Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, and Landon Dickerson all start the week on the injury report as well.

It’s not likely all of those contributors will miss time for the Buccaneers, but it’s equally likely they’ll have to play on a short week without at least a couple of them.

All of this is beginning to set the stage Tom Brady will lead the Tampa Bay offense back onto the field, looking for yet another personal best for two weeks in a row, and another piece of NFL history.

With four touchdown passes on Thursday night, Brady would become the first quarterback in NFL history to reach 600 career touchdown passes.

Helping him reach that milestone are three star wide receivers (Mike Evans, Godwin, and Brown) who need under 60-yards a game each to give the Bucs three 1,000-yard receivers in 2021.

As the Tampa Bay offense starts looking more and more like the late 2020 version which helped carry the team to a Super Bowl win, another big performance in Week 6 would give a big jump in confidence this team can weather all the injuries it’s suffered thus far.

They won’t be pushing the Buccaneers towards victory alone, but it’s nice to know a team can lean on their offense to score in bunches when the defense needs them to. Still, a lot of credit should be given to Todd Bowles and his position coaches, for producing a defense that has held three of their five opponents to 25 points or less this season, despite the laundry list of injuries suffered on that side of the ball.

We talk about all of this, and more, on today’s episode of the Locked On Bucs Podcast!