Postmortem? No, postseason
BUCCANEERS
“The year we went to the Super Bowl with the Giants, we were 9-7. All those guys on that team rallied up. Everybody came as one and connected. No matter what the call was, we just got to beat the guy in front of us.”
That Giants team finished the season by winning six straight (counting the postseason) to claim the Lombardi Trophy, but it sat in a much better spot after 10 games (6-4) than this team does. Pierre-Paul said it shows that winning six straight is possible.
“You got to trust,” he said. “That’s how you build. You have to trust everybody on the team. … You’re going to make mistakes, but at the end of the day, if you trust the guy next to you, then you know you’re going to do whatever it takes for y’all to get the same job done.
“That’s the difference between a Super Bowl and a playoff team. That’s why Tom Brady gets to the Super Bowl: because he trusts Bill Belichick and everybody trusts in
Bill Belichick. That’s the same thing we’re got to do here, but everybody’s got to grasp it, not just me.”
Pierre-Paul returned to practice after missing Wednesday with a left knee injury, but he was wearing a large brace.
Pierre-Paul missed the entire preseason and the season’s first seven games recovering from a neck injury he sustained in an offseason car accident. He has played in four games and has been in on more than 91% of the team’s defensive snaps in each of the past three.
“It’s basically still preseason for me,” Pierre-Paul said. “That was my fourth game, so my body was feeling a lot of bruises and contact last week. But I’m at a stage now where I’m ready to roll. Hopefully, you’ll see a difference in next week and from four games to now. That’s basically what it is. …
“This is a lot of work, no OTAs or anything, but everything is possible if you just believe in God.”