Koetter geared up for regular season

TAMPA — The Bucs wrapped up the preseason with a 13-10 loss to the Washington Redskins on Thursday night. Thirty-seven of their best players sat out of the game, and starting Friday 37 of their worst players were going to get released.

Officially, the Bucs’ exhibition record was 1-3, but as coach Dirk Koetter correctly said, “I wish we were 4-0, but we're not. We're 1-3 and no one will give two craps about that.''

Nobody will remember that neither quarterback Jameis Winston nor Ryan Fitzpatrick threw a touchdown pass in August. In fact, they were three minutes away from being the only NFL team not to do so until Bernard Reedy broke that streak on a 10-yard TD reception from Sefo Liufau.

After Thursday night, nobody will really care about red-zone interceptions or wayward field-goal kickers. Only Hard Knocks will serve as a biopic of what went down on and off the field during six weeks of training camp and preseason.

Only one thing is important. For the most part, the Bucs are healthy entering their regular-season opener at Miami Sept. 10.

They've already had a lot of hype and Bucs fans have plenty of reasons to hope.

But here's the truth: nobody, not even Koetter, knows what to expect from the Bucs in 2017.

“It's easy for all of us — myself included, and most of you [reporters] included — to speculate on what type of team we're going to have based on the preseason,” Koetter said. “But you know what? None of us really know. None of us really know how this group of 53 guys is going to come together and how we're going to play this season.”

On Friday, the Bucs placed defensive lineman DaVonte Lambert and rookie defensive tackle Stevie Tu'ikolovatu on injured reserve.

Lambert, who has a wrist injury, started five of 11 games he appeared in last season. Tu'ikolovatu was a seventhround pick in this year's draft. Lambert has a wrist injury. Tu'ikolovatu hurt his right knee during the preseason.