Last season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers got strong contributions from their rookie running back, Bucky Irving, but that doesn’t mean he’s sitting back and expecting to impress again in his sophomore campaign in the league.
After totaling 1,514 yards from scrimmage, scoring eight touchdowns, and being ranked fourth in the league in yards per carry, Irving knows that he’s entering the 2025 season with a blank slate.
“I feel like once you always start something new, it’s going to have to slow down for you a little bit,” Irving said, according to PewterReport.com. “When I first got thrown in, the game was moving pretty fast for me, but yeah, as I just settled down and let the game – and just think about it like, ‘it’s just football.’
“And not think about too [many] other things that are going on out there. But yeah, just always going back and looking at the film and looking at things that you can get better at and improve in and also not getting satisfied and stuck in last year, because it’s a new year.
“Nobody cares about what you did last year. It’s, ‘What can you do for me now?’ But I’ve always been that guy that pretty much never gets stuck in the past and always [am] where my feet [are] and work hard every day.”
Irving noted that his success is due to Tampa Bay’s strong offensive line, and he made sure to give his teammates their due credit.
“We have all [those] guys returning but just being able to have trust in those guys,” Irving said. “Like you always say, when I come up here, I don’t talk about myself. I talk about the O-line because without those guys, none of these things are possible.
“So just being able to give credit to those guys every chance that I get, I’m going to do that.”
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.