"This is Josh Freeman's team." These are words you've heard Raheem Morris and others associated with the team speak numerous times the past two years. This offense-first attitude is very different from attitudes we've seen in the past. Whenever the Bucs have had sustained success, it has been the defense that carried that success. While Doug Williams and Ricky Bell were important for the early Bucs, Lee Roy Selmon and that terrifying front-seven were the main reason the Bucs went to the playoffs 3 times from '79 to '82. And although Dunn, Alstott and a bit later Brad Johnson were important for the Bucs, none of them were crucial to the team's success from '97 through '02. You take away the defense of those teams, and they plummet. You take away one of the offensive components, and they may lose a few games more but they don't turn into their '76 selves.
But in 2010 the roles were reversed. The team won 10 games, but without Josh Freeman the Bucs may have not have won half those games. In games against the Browns, the Bengals and the Rams Freeman had to engineer last-minute game-winning drives. Against the Cardinals and Seahawks Freeman and co. put up a plethora of points to lead their teams to victory. That's not to say that the defense was bad or replaceable, whilt its first-half performance was generally bad, the defense put together some stellar second halves to give Freeman the chance to win those games. But all those stellar second-halves would have gone to waste without the scoring prowess of Freeman, Blount, Williams and Winslow.
This is uncharted territory for Bucs fans. A potent offense and a franchise quarterback? What about the defensive heritage of this team? The defense isn't bad, but this isn't a team that's going to be built on defense, despite Raheem Morris's defensive background. While the Bucs are undoubtedly going to continue to add defensive players to the team, the core of this team will be offense. The defense will have to be good enough to give the offense a chance, but it won't have to win any games. That makes for some exciting football games with lots of big plays, but I'd still prefer if the defense was good enough to win its own games.