He walks out of the showers into an empty, but cluttered, locker room. It’s been barely 45 minutes since the Bucs lost 23-20 to Carolina on Sunday, and Tristan Wirfs’ teammates have already departed and headed toward the bus.
He walks out of the showers into an empty, but cluttered, locker room.
It’s been barely 45 minutes since the Bucs lost 23-20 to Carolina on Sunday, and Tristan Wirfs’ teammates have already departed and headed toward the bus. The floor is littered with towels, gloves and the final remnants of a fading team’s pride.
Sooner or later, everyone loses in the NFL. Coaches know it, players accept it. They may act solemn and sad in a postgame environment, but everyone understands the scoreboard is an occupational hazard. In such moments, you dress quietly and quickly and move on to the next game.
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This one felt different.
This felt like the acquiescence of a team that has lost its way.
Instead of anger or incredulousness, players seemed strangely at ease. As if seven losses in nine games was merely a symptom and not a reckoning. Because they could still win the NFC South with two more victories, they sounded like poker players confident that their next card would be an ace.
Maybe they had worked out all of their rage the previous week after losing to Atlanta. Maybe they were just whistling past the graveyard.
Whatever the explanation, Wirfs was one of the few willing to engage in earnest soul-searching.
Even if there were no answers readily available.
“I don’t know if it’s that we’re not staying locked-in for the whole game. I wish I could pinpoint it,” he said, as he sat half-dressed at his locker. “I wish I could put it on one thing. I wish I had an answer so we could get the guys, get everyone, back on track and going in the direction we need to go.
“I wish I had the answers to this test. But, you know, we keep saying that every week.”
Wirfs, 26, was one of nine players in Sunday’s game who had been around when the Bucs won the Super Bowl barely five years ago. That means he’s one of a handful of players who knows the difference between a good team in a bad spot, and a bad team pretending otherwise.
For the longest time, he was convinced the 2025 version of the Bucs was a team on the verge of great things. He still wants to believe that, but the results are getting harder to justify.
And he understands the ramifications of too many losses in a performance-obsessed industry.
“It’s frustrating. It’s at that point where you start getting a lot of doubt, a lot of external noise,” Wirfs said. “We’re at that point where we’ve got to do our best to come together. I know it’s hard not to listen to the outside noise. I’m trying to get better at it, like staying off social media or whatever it is.
“... I think we just have to look to (each other), to the people inside our building and understand those are the opinions that matter. We can uplift each other, we can right this ship, it’s just getting harder for us.”
This did not happen overnight. There hasn’t been a single a-ha moment.
It started with injuries, it was exacerbated by a difficult midseason schedule, and now it has inexplicably unraveled in every horrible way imaginable.
Fifteen games into the season, the offense has no identity. The defense’s calling card is late collapses.
Meanwhile, nobody has been benched and no significant names have been cut. It’s as if the front office and coaching staff are just waiting for everyone in uniform to remember what winning was like in September.
Wirfs is asked if the problems are rooted in the team’s mindset.
“It must be. I mean, I think we have a really talented football team,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
His voice trails off, and Wirfs stares into his locker as if the answer might be hiding there.
Meanwhile, equipment guys are wheeling laundry around the room and picking up discarded tape and other detritus from a third consecutive loss. The TV cameras are gone, and the last of the media relations people are eager to shut the locker room doors for good.
Hope still exists for the Bucs.
It’s just getting harder to find in the clutter of another loss.
• • •
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Category: General Sports
