Bucs RB Mike James Not Forgotten

Even a guy walking around with a white cane can see the Bucs have a loaded backfield. Doug Martin, Charles Sims, Bobby Rainey, Jeff Demps.

Oh, yeah. And Mike James. Maybe you remember him?

The same guy who ran for 158 yards against eventual Super Bowl champion Seattle last season?

For a while, it seemed easy to forget James was on the team, as he missed a good chunk of last season with a broken ankle, having played in but five games.
Bucs coach Lovie Smith, since the combine, rarely uttered his name (never a good thing). James has also been hard to find at practice, often relegated to working with the third team. Those are a bad combination for a player’s future.

Today, Bucs coach Lovie Smith broke his silence about James, a native of Haines City, mainly because Lovie was directly asked about James.

“I saw from last year, [he is a] good football player,” Lovie said. “Good size. Of course, that injury [last season] kind of set him back a little bit. But he’s one of our running backs. We’ve made it known that we’re going to play more than one. You need a lot. In order for us to be a good running football team, we need to have more than one good player, and we feel like we have at least about four that we feel like if we went into a game with them, we could have a good running game.”

So is James one of the chosen ones? At best, he would be the No. 3 running back behind Martin and Sims. But James could also find himself down the totem pole below Rainey and Demps.

Time will tell, of course. It would behoove James to shine in preseason games if he plans on staying on the Bucs roster.


(joebucsfan.com)