Lovie Smith to call the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive plays

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense was pretty bad last year.  That came as quite the surprise after they hired Lovie Smith as their head coach and Leslie Frazier as their defensive coordinator.  Both Smith and Frazier had been highly successful defensive coordinators in previous stops.  It didn't work out, for whatever reason, in year one with the Buccaneers.

Well Smith obviously thinks that part of the reason the defense didn't play well was because of the plays Frazier called.  The Tampa Bay Times is reporting that Smith will take over calling the defensive plays for his team this season.

This is of interest to us here because the Titans travel to Tampa to take on the Buccaneers in week 1.  You can believe that Smith will have some special things ready for Marcus Mariota in his first NFL start, but the scheme shouldn't be that much different than it was with Frazier calling the plays.