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Adams wasn't answer, but big question looms

Staff photo by CLIFF McBRIDE

Oft-maligned defensive end Gaines Adams has been shipped to Chicago for a second-round pick in 2010.

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 18, 2009

Updated: 10/18/2009 12:33 am

TAMPA - We'll miss his walk, his smile, that funny little way he had of never getting close to the quarterback.

And so Gaines "Burger" Adams joins the Bucs' draft pick book of the dead, with cadavers like Eric Curry and Keith McCants, with driftwood like Charles McRae.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

The Bucs are moving on, at high speed, nothing new for the Raheem Morris-Mark Dominik regime.

They're admitting this franchise made a boo-boo when it made Adams the fourth pick of the 2007 draft. Of course, it wasn't Bucs coach Raheem Morris and General Manager Mark Dominik's mistake, which made it easier to send Adams to Chicago for a second-round pick in the next draft.

Deciding what you have and don't have, and doing it quickly, well, it matters. There's no time to waste.

Find out who your guys are, and aren't.

Adams wasn't their guy.

But who are their guys?

That's the question that looms.

You couldn't build with Adams.

But who are the building blocks?

The Bucs made it a point this offseason to break with the past, and then some.

Gone suddenly was this franchise's all-time tackler and player (Derrick Brooks) and Warrick Dunn, Joey Galloway, and Jeff Garcia and, yes, Matt Bryant. There was nothing halfway about it.

Now, the Leftwich-McCown quarterback race, that was halfway ...

We knew this was going to be painful to watch, and it hasn't disappointed.

What's needed, if nothing else, is decisiveness.

What's needed are building blocks.

The move to younger quarterbacks, the Joshes, is a mission of discovery.

Moving Adams was a mission of reality.

It doesn't mean the Bucs are better this morning.

It means they're not messing around, even surrounded by this mess.

Do they have a choice?

If you're going to dump Derrick Brooks, how do you keep letting Gaines Adams hang onto a paycheck and the back end of the wagon week after week? Then again, there's Michael Clayton, millionaire, with two touchdowns and many more drops over the past 60 games. Go figure.

Maybe this is another new beginning for these Bucs as run by Morris and Dominik. They have bungled their share of moves (the McCown-Leftwich drip-drip-drip for one, the $2 million to Mike Nugent being another. So is Clayton's deal).

But you can't knock these guys for cutting ties to Adams.

Now, you knock them if they go out and get some 30-something end. It doesn't fit with youth being served. You can also knock them if Adams lands in Chicago and Rod Marinelli, a magician at defensive line, if not head coach, transforms Adams into a star.

Then there are the draft picks coming up. A top-5 pick is looming and there are the two second-round picks. We can't say Dominik and Morris have proven themselves. We have no idea what they have in Josh Freeman. Not yet, anyway.

The Bucs have drafted just two Pro Bowlers since 1998 - two.

How do you hit on guys like Brooks and Warren Sapp, anyway? How do you find a John Lynch, a Ronde Barber?

The future hinges on Dominik and Morris' success rate at finding building blocks.

I'm not seeing that many of them right now, are you?

They come along so rarely.

Morris and Dominik move on.

Gaines Adams wasn't their guy.

Only he better not turn into someone else's guy.

And you find some guys yourself.

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