Fantasy football outlook for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

In an effort to talk about every team's fantasy football outlook, Evan Silva of Rotoworld actually managed to write a whole lot of words about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' season outlook. Pretty insightful words too, though perhaps not quite the words the Buccaneers want to hear.

Obviously, hitting the main notes is easy: Mike Evans is going to be a top fantasy wideout, Vincent Jackson will be a good number two (a WR3 in fantasy), and that's about all you can count on. The Big Question of the year is, as per usual, who will get all of the carries. Personally, I'd stay away from all the Bucs' running backs as I expect a whole lot of committee running (and more plodding efforts), but Silva's actually fairly bullish on Doug Martin.

One intriguing note: Jameis Winston is probably a good fantasy buy because he'll be asked to throw the ball a whole lot, will likely rack up some touchdowns and apparently, he faces a very soft quarterback schedule. Likely interceptions or no, he'll probably be pretty productive.

But the thing I'm more interested in than the fantasy implications, is the team's win total. And Silva has a few things to say about that, too.

The Bucs have exciting young firepower in their passing game, but are still squarely in rebuild mode. Their defensive end depth chart is easily the worst in football, while the running game figures to be hit or miss at best on a weekly basis. The offensive line is being pieced together with two rookie starters, including one who played Division-3 college football last year. On defense, this team will struggle to both rush the passer and cover in the back end with a rag-tag safety corps. My guess is the 2015 Buccaneers end up in a lot of shootout-type games, and fail to win them. I do believe the Jameis Winston pick has Tampa Bay headed in the right direction, but envision the Bucs as a 4-12/5-11 team this year. Their Vegas Win Total is 6.0.

As much as I try, and as much as I've been burned by the Bucs over the past many, many years, I just can't bring myself to be negative about the team this year. There are too many improvements, too many reasons to believe that last year's problems were temporary, to think that things are going to be a disaster this year. Not that I'd expect them to make the playoffs, but an 8-8 or 9-7 season seems perfectly realistic to me.