Tampa Bay pulls plug on No. 1 problem

Jameis Winston has put the Tampa Bay Bucs in an untenable position: Start a 36-year-old journeyman at quarterback the rest of the season.

The Bucs formally have benched Winston and named veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick as their starting quarterback for the Week 9 matchup against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, according to Greg Auman of The Athletic and other sources.

Ryan Fitzpatrick, this mess isn’t on you. #Fitzmagic is back in play, and just in time for Halloween! Get out those fake beards and dangling jewelry, kids. We have a winner.

That is not what we are saying about the Bucs, however. They are essentially giving up on their former No. 1 pick in 2015, and waving the white flag.

They can no longer pin the hopes of this franchise on an underachieving, erratic 24-year-old who is imploding his career and potential right before their eyes.

Color me surprised in some ways, but not shocked.

But let’s not bury the lead either before we get any deeper into the story.

Winston is toast. Done. See you. The Bucs would not have made this move had they not seen the same thing. His contract calls for a guaranteed base salary of nearly $21 million next season. They will either eat all of that money or try to find a suitable trade partner before the NFL trading deadline today.

This is one complicated mess with significant ripples. Coach Dirk Koetter and General Manager Jason Licht are officially on the clock as well, and their time with the Bucs may have a short expiration date.

Licht was head of the Bucs’ brain trust that made Winston the No. 1 pick.

Koetter is the former offensive coordinator and now head coach entrusted to manage and groom Winston into a star quarterback.

All three have now officially failed miserably.

Fitzpatrick is a short-term answer but not the future. Winston is the future with no answers.

“Yeah, we don’t need to talk about it,” Koetter said Sunday. “I mean today is not the day I need to decide that, right? I don’t have any problem making decisions, and I’ll make it when the time is right. But now is not the right time to make it.”

But he knew. We all did, that the smart money was on Fitzpatrick, who stepped into the huddle after Winston wet the bed in Cincinnati on Sunday, leaving the unsightly mess of four interceptions, forcing Koetter to intervene.

Fitzpatrick rallied the Bucs to 18 unanswered points before the Bengals won the game on a last-second field goal.

Licht would like to prove that he was right when he made Winston the No. 1 pick despite the personal dossier that put Winston on shaky ground as a prospect coming out of Florida State.

It’s not working. Winston has played 48 games in his NFL career and has thrown 50 interceptions and fumbled 21 times. That’s 71 gifted possessions to the other team. In layman’s terms, that stinks.

Winston already has thrown 10 interceptions in four games (only three starts) this season. His passer rating is an abysmal (and career-low) 74.7. Things are so toxic on the field that DeSean Jackson has reportedly asked to be traded. There is no chemistry there, unless you include the word “volatile.”

Speaking of, Winston missed the first three games of the season while serving a three-game suspension imposed by the NFL for assaulting a female Arizona Uber driver.

Winston is a flawed quarterback, both on and off the field.

Benching him is the right thing to do under impossible circumstances. It tells everyone that the Bucs have seen enough of a sample size in four years.

Jameis Winston is not their franchise QB, nor their savior.

Strap on your seat belt kids. The ride is about to get bumpy.