–It’s been a very good year for defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, who leads the Bucs with 11.5 sacks. He’s the first Tampa Bay player to post double-digit sacks since Simeon Rice in 2005 – and while he’s been held without a single sack or quarterback hit over the past three weeks, this year’s sack total is his best since 2014.
What’s more impressive is that he did it dealing with a host of injuries.
Asked to assess his season Wednesday, Pierre-Paul said he could have done more, saying this was probably the most injury-riddled season of his nine-year NFL career.
“I think I did OK, man,” Pierre-Paul said. “I think I could have did way better than I did this year. But injuries happen. You’ve got to fight through them. And I’ve been fighting through injuries for the longest (time) now this whole year. It’s probably the one season that I’ve had the most injuries. But I fought through it all year and I’m still fighting through them. But at the end of the day, I think I did OK. Come back next year and rehab my body and get it right for next year.”
Dating to mid-October, Pierre-Paul has been listed with six different injuries – knee, hip, shoulder, foot, ribs and hand – but he’s still managed to stay on the field more than nearly every other defensive player in the league.
Going into Sunday’s regular-season finale in Atlanta, Pierre-Paul has played in 90 percent of his team’s snaps, second-highest among NFL defensive players – only Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald’s 91 percent is higher – and his 823 snaps rank fourth overall among all defensive players.
Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter said it wasn’t the plan to have Pierre-Paul play so many snaps going into the season, but that he’s set an example for his teammates.
“I would say he set the tone for the team,” Koetter said. “He set the bar extremely (high) for everybody else. All the guys who have played significant time are hurt this time of year. They’ve got different aches and JPP probably has four different things that can keep him out on their own, so he’s set the bar really high for everybody else.”
–Bucs quarterback Ryan Griffin has been a backup for six NFL seasons, but at 29, he has not taken a single snap inn a regular season game.
The Bucs will make him the No. 2 QB again Sunday in hopes of breaking that streak if the opportunity presents itself.
Griffin completed 68 percent of his passes for a total of 518 yards and four touchdowns this preseason, compiling a 105.3 passer rating, though the team would like to see how his improving skills translate in a real game. And so would Griffin.
“In the offseason, it kind of comes down to the whole thing has been whenever I talk and get the evaluation after the season, it’s that I don’t have any experience,” Griffin said. “It’s big to get in there and get some time just to show you can do it. … It means a lot, and that’s something I want to prove whenever I get in there, if I have a chance, is to prove them right.
“They’ve kept me and believed in me and I want to prove them right and show I deserve to be here. It’s tough, but it’s part of the job. You talk about being a professional, it’s one of the things that it takes is sometimes you know you’re not going to get into there but you still have to go in and do your job and focus and prepare like you are.”
BY THE NUMBERS: 37 — Number of sacks by the Bucs this season, an improvement over an NFL-worst 22 a year ago.
