TAMPA — As logistics go, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger challenge than making sure 53 football players all get back in town for a busy week of practice in the aftermath of a major hurricane.
But the Bucs have pulled it off, going 53-for-53 in getting their roster back safely to One Buc Place as practice resumes in full today for Sunday's season opener at home against the Bears.
The NFL mandates that players get four consecutive days off during a bye week, and when the Bucs' Week 1 game at the Dolphins was postponed to November, they had to honor the bye-week requirement, sending players off for the long weekend, knowing Hurricane Irma could make return travel exceedingly difficult.