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John Lynch is out of football but it didn’t take long for him to find a different type of job in the National Football League. Lynch, like a number of his fellow friends in Tampa Bay, will find himself in the booth this coming season calling games on television. In addition to his duties calling NFC games for FOX, Lynch will be calling a few games this preseason for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.Lynch joined WDAE in Tampa to talk about the success of himself and his former colleagues in Tampa, as well as to share his thoughts on the coming NFL season. If his long-winded rambling responses on WDAE are any indication of what viewers are in store for when Lynch is on the call – all I have to say is buckle up, feel free to push ‘mute’ on the remote control and maybe instead find the games on the radio that he’s calling.
On the success that his fellow Buccaneers teammates and coaches have had finding work in the television business – Warren Sapp is on NFL Network; Tony Dungy on NBC’s Football Night in America; Shaun King, Trent Dilfer and Keyshawn Johnson on ESPN; and Jon Gruden on ABC’s Monday Night Football.
Lynch himself will be commentating a number of Buccaneers game this coming season:
‘We had a colorful group, and it was a special group. and I think a group with a real high football IQ. I think we kinda all grew up together. We used to love sitting around the locker room when we weren’t playing football, talking football. And now you’re seeing these guys sprout up all over the league and it’s kind of fun.”
what he thinks the Bucs should do considering the personnel and the new coaching staff in place:
“I’m excited to see whether it’s going to be a melding of philosophies with Raheem Morris and Joe Barry and Todd Walsh and some of the guys that are holdovers from Monte’s system or if it’s going to be a whole-sale change. And you know, I think they would be best off making the whole-sale change because I think in Denver what we tried to do was meld a couple of different types of philosophies and I don’t think they ever gave Jim Bates a fair shake.And I believe if you’re going to hire a great coordinator that has a great resume like Jim Bates, I think you let him run the defense the way he wants to run it. But in saying that, I think there’s a lot of experience in a guy like Joe Barry, who’s been a coordinator in this league; been a linebackers coach for Monte Kiffin, and he can bring a lot of knowledge to Jim Bates even though he’s a younger guy. So hopefully they work together but I do think there’s going to be some transition. I think you’re fooling yourself if you think they’re going to be playing at the level that Monte’s defense played at for years.
There’s going to be a little transition. You know, one of the things that was so brilliant about the defensive scheme in Tampa and it was much like it was when I went to Denver – they always have success drafting offensive linemen and drafting running backs because they had played in the same system for 10, 15 years and they know the exact player that’s a fit – the same thing is true for the defense that [Tampa] ran, when you run it over and over, all of a sudden the scouts become familiar with the exact type of player that they’re looking for. Now all of a sudden, you’ve got to start looking for specific types of football players at each position and the skills that make them successful and so, there will be a little transition and I think people have got to expect that.”
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