Morris needs to stop blaming Bucs' losses on his players

He's at it again.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris is back to publicly saying he doesn't have the right players to play defense.

"We'll get there," Morris said the day after the defense parted in Miami to let the Dolphins get away with a win, the Bucs' eighth loss in nine tries during the Rah I expedition. "We'll find those guys, and we'll go out there and get them. Right now, we've got to go out there and play with the guys that we have."

And coach with the coaches they have, too.

As much as I like Morris the man, I'm fairly sick and tired of him invariably singling out his personnel for not being good enough.

Who says he's good enough?

He keeps yelling for somebody to make a play.

Hey, I watched the defense fall all over itself in that last drive in Miami.

It looked mightily confused.

Part of it stemmed from the fact that Torrie Cox, who'd played nickelback during practice last week, was injured on the kickoff to Miami after the Bucs grabbed a 23-22 lead. The result was mass confusion. Players didn't know what to do at times.

Tell me at least part of that isn't coaching.

Oh, wait, it's the players.

The inability to stop the run, to pressure the quarterback - it's always the players.

Back to Rah.

"We're just not made right now to knock people back," Morris said. "That's how we're cut. We don't have big, intimidating linebackers or big, intimidating linemen."

How would you feel if you read that in the newspaper and you were a small, non-intimidating Bucs linebacker or lineman?

Also, didn't Morris and general manager Mark Dominik begin to put together a new team when they took over?

If the guys don't fit the scheme yet, maybe you shouldn't be using this scheme.

I have no problem with the way Morris apparently calls out his guys behind closed doors. I like it. It's good stuff. It tells me he's as much Coach Morris as he is Rah.

But he can't keep hiding behind lack of personnel every time something blows up, at least publicly. Tony Dungy didn't do that. Mike Tomlin didn't do that. Jon Gruden didn't do that, at least not en masse.

It usually is about personnel in the NFL, but for a new coach to come in, remake a team and then start blaming some of the guys he chose to remake it with, well, Morris might think he's being honest, but it just looks so small.

Morris pays lip service to the coaches needing to coach better, too. (He called himself out for getting that penalty for complaining about that horrid officiating call in Miami). But I'm not quite sure he doesn't believe he and his staff are doing a bang-up job. If only it wasn't for these darned players ...

The Bucs' defense has been the problem all season. It can't stop people. We know that. And we know it probably is about personnel.

But the head coach can't keep blaming it on the players.

Morris and Dominik put them on the roster.

Morris put them on the field.

I said a few weeks back that it doesn't take much for people to go from "It's the players" to "It's the coach."

Morris needs to crank down the "We don't have the right guys" talk.

The Saints come marching in Sunday. They've done nothing but win this season.

The Bucs have done nothing but lose.

The players and the coaches.