Ronde Barber: "We got Raheem Morris fired"

Veteran cornerback (now safety) Ronde Barber appeared on NFL Network yesterday to talk about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their new regime, and he had one interesting thing to say on the failed 2011 season:

We needed something. For whatever reason, our 2011 season did not fall in line like we had expected it to. There were a bunch of reasons, it's too late and kind of pointless to extrapolate on all those reasons. But we had a bunch of young guys and they became discouraged at the end of the football year and it showed. We were very uncompetitive, and it got a good friend of mine, coach Raheem Morris, fired.

I think he's exactly right, there. The Bucs 'became discouraged' toward the end of the season. The young team didn't know how to correct its issues, and its issues were plentiful. While we can blame the coaches, ultimately the players on the field were the ones who failed.

We won't know whether the new regime can solve this problem, but one thing did stand out in this interview: Ronde Barber was very positive about the changes Schiano had made.