The Tampa Bay Bucs, trying to erase some of the embarrassment of an opening day loss to Tennesee, will at least be closer to whole when they visit the New Orleans Saints Sunday.
Wide receiver Mike Evans, who has been out with a hamstring injury, probably will make his season debut for the Bucs.
“We’re in pretty good health,” coach Lovie Smith said. “Mike Evans has been able to do more and more each day, which is a good thing. I feel like we are ready to go.
“Guys, of course, are always [saying they are ready to go], and you want that. You want them to say that they are ready to go. Mike wasn’t ready to go last week. He’s closer this week. We have a little bit of time before game-time.”
Evans’ absence wasn’t felt for much of the game. After quarterback Jameis Winston threw his first pass, the Bucs trailed 14-0 and went on to lose 42-14.
Evans said he felt fine.
“I feel 100 percent,” he said. “I’m ready to go. I’ve been practicing. I’ve just got to see how I feel Saturday, that’s what Coach told me, so we’ll see then. I’ll practice today and tomorrow, we’ll see how it goes.”
“[I’m] confident, but we need to play the game. Me saying what we’ve done and what we need to do doesn’t really matter an awful lot. Again, when you play like that you want another opportunity, want another chance. We have that chance against a good opponent and to get a win on the road would make us feel a lot better. We could have a short memory if we can get a win this week.
“We’re right back on track with a win this week. It’s as simple as that. It’s early in the year. We haven’t had a chance to [be a .500 win team]. There’s a lot of things we haven’t done, but a chance to go and come back 1-1 and have the only division win for our division, that would be big for us. We realize that.”
Smith said that Winston is preparing the way he always has.
“Sometimes you can be doing everything the right way, preparing the right way, trying to do things the right way and it just doesn’t turn out the right way,” Smith said. “It’s no more than that, but you don’t change up what you’ve been doing. You do it better and that’s all we’ve done right now. One game into [the season]. In baseball they let you swing twice at least and most of the time three times, right? We struck out one time. No more than that. We are going to keep doing what we do. We’re going to do it better this week and get a win.”
