Bucs' Bates Preaching Patience

TAMPA - Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Jim Bates emphasized "patience" during his team's first mini-camp.

Bates is installing a new defensive scheme this offseason and explained that everyone involved needs to understand it is a learning process.

"Number one, we have to have a lot of patience as coaches and players learning a new scheme," Bates said. "It's going to be a process where we should see daily improvement and the biggest thing for players is we can't get frustrated at players as far as learning a new scheme and learning new things.

"It's a tremendous amount of patience, but we're [taking] steps."

Bates said he spent a lot of time monitoring the steps of Bucs safety Jermaine Phillips.

Phillips has played safety since entering the NFL in 2002, but Tampa Bay is trying him out at linebacker. Although it initially appeared this might be a simple experiment, the switch seems more realistic.

"I paid a little more attention to 'Flip' than I did other players. I thought he had an excellent start," Bates said. "Of course, we didn't go against the run this morning. We just did a 7-on-7 against the offense, but he's picked it up well and he's done some things surprisingly well."

Bates said he is using this mini-camp to judge the athleticism, work habits, techniques and talent of players, but cannot make a final assessment until everyone is in pads.

However, he does believe Gaines Adams, Tampa Bay's former first round draft pick, can excel at right end this season.

"It's wide open for him as far as the ability level," Bates said. "We've have tremendous success with guys, and I think I mentioned it in the first press conference, with Jason Taylor. We went from 2 1/2 sacks to 14 1/2 to 17. Gaines had five or six last year [Adams had 6.5 sacks]. There is no reason he can't be a big time sacker in this league.

"Through our experience, second year going in the third year is the biggest jump in production."