Dirk Koetter won’t take on another team as the head coach of the Buccaneers for a few months, but he’s found an opponent to game plan against this spring.
That opponent goes by the name of Mother Nature and Koetter is hoping to limit her impact on his team while they are on the practice field. The Bucs held practice at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday and Koetter said that the team will continue to work in the morning through training camp and the preseason in hopes of avoiding the worst of the heat in Tampa.
“The last 10 years I’ve been coaching in the South I really do believe there is a cumulative effect over the course of the season, from August until the end of the year, when you’re out here, even if it’s for walkthrough at 12, 1, 2 [p.m.] and it’s 95 degrees and the sun is beating on you,” Koetter said, via the team’s website. “I just think there’s a cumulative effect. We are going to do everything we can to try to chip away at that. There’s some things we can’t get away from, but we’re going to do what we can.”
As a local meteorologist pointed out, there’s no guarantees that the weather will be cooler early in the day and the nature of summer in Florida is such that you’re going to be broiling at some point or another while on the practice field. If you can limit those moments as much as possible, practices should be more productive which should benefit the team as they prepare for more tangible opposition.
