One Unit To Rule Them All: Desmond Watson Gets Placed On The Bucs' Non-Football Injury List For Coming Into Camp At 450 lbs
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.Tampa Bay Times -- Desmond Watson was working with a trainer on another field when the Bucs began training camp. How quickly the defensive tackle can join his teammates depends on what the scales say.
…until Watson reaches an undisclosed weight goal set by the Bucs, it doesn’t appear he will be joining his teammates for practice. The Bucs placed Watson on the non-football illness list, even though he was able to work for about 30 minutes on conditioning Wednesday.
You know in The Replacements when the Washington Sentinels go out and bring in a Sumo wrestler to play at tackle for them? Well I guess the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a similar thought when they went out and signed Desmond Watson out of Florida as an undrafted free agent.
The dude is absolutely massive. You simply cannot teach that level of pure girth. Football is a game of inches. And when one singular player on your roster can take up the majority of those inches, well then it's worth giving them a shot.
Guys like Alvin Kamara, Bijan Robinson, and Chuba Hubbard aren't going to have any gaps to run the ball when Desmond Watson is out there clogging up the line of scrimmage like a eating a few sticks of butter clogs up your arteries.
But apparently the Bucs don't fully see the vision. They signed the heaviest man in football, but are now punishing him for it. It's like signing Superman and then holding him out of practice until he stops flying. Why wouldn't you want to take advantage of the biggest dude in football? Switch him over to the offensive line, even. If you want to protect Baker Mayfield, then this is like giving him a midsize SUV blocking for him.
And if anything, it seems like holding him out of practice is the opposite of what you should be doing if you want the fella to shed some lbs. If the Bucs were serious about him dropping weight, then they'd just keep him out there for every rep at practice. I'm no dietician or anything, but the "hey, you're not allowed to exercise with us until you stop being fat" approach seems a tad backwards to me.
Anyway, here's to hoping that Desmond Watson finds his way on the field soon. Because a unit like that has the ability to be game breaking. Even if he does shed some weight, he'd still be a total mutant out there for the Bucs. Just look at what a monster Jordan Davis still looks like after dropping 26 lbs.
Obviously he had about a 100 lb head start on Desmond Watson. But you get the gist. The Eagles tried doing the same thing with Jordan Davis as the Bucs are doing with Desmond Watson. He was a little too beefy his first couple of seasons to stay on the field as much as he needed to actually make an impact on the game. And now this year it looks like he might be the most menacing defensive player in football.