Mike Glennon vs. Josh Freeman - The challenger doesn't have a shot

There's a quarterback controversy in Tampa, somehow, and Mike Glennon is the challenger. Unfortunately for Mike Glennon and his fans, though, he looks more like what he really is: a rookie adjusting to the NFL.

In his first rookie minicamp, Mike Glennon still looked sharp, but he was playing with and against rookies and tryout players. Hardly a challenging environment. Not coincidentally, that coincided with the height of the Mike Glennon-Josh Freeman quarterback controversy. And then Glennon encountered some veterans, and things changed a little.

After the first week of OTAs, Pewter Report noted that Glennon was playing it safe in passing drills, and was just learning the playbook.

Glennon took the field, but was playing against the second and third-teamers so he and a much easier time finding open receivers. However, all of his passes were short and risk-free so he didn't showcase his big arm at all in this drill. Glennon seemed to be getting a feel for the scheme rather than just letting it loose.

That was from his first OTA practice two weeks ago, and Pewter Report's comments last week seemed surprisingly similar.

While Freeman probed the defense with deep passes, rookie quarterback Mike Glennon, who took second-team reps on Wednesday ahead of Dan Orlovsky, stuck with underneath passes and rarely threw the ball downfield except for an intermediate strike to wide receiver Chris Owusu.

Mike Glennon didn't sound like he was challenging Freeman either, in a short post-practice interview after his first OTA. "I'm just concerned with what I'm doing, my head's spinning enough that I don't even really look to see who's on the other side. I'm just trying to find the open receiver and get him the ball."

Meanwhile, JoeBucsFan noted that he looked like a backup quarterback in his second week of OTAs. That's a collection of pretty bad reviews for someone who's supposedly challenging Josh Freeman for a starting job. This is no surprise: he's a third-round rookie. Third-round rookies as a rule do not look good in training camp, or very often in their career, indeed.

Sure, there was Russell Wilson. He was an outlier, obviously, and Glennon is no Wilson whose only criticism was related to his height. Glennon has a lot of good traits, but he has a lot of things he needs to improve on, too. And now he's moving into a very complicated scheme that relies heavily on sight adjustments where the receivers and quarterback have to be on the same page.

Mike Glennon has potential. He might actually be the future of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, if Josh Freeman bombs. I am not looking forward to that day, but it's possible. But the idea that Glennon is going to beat out Freeman? That's not happening.

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