“Wide receiver depth, as you guys have noticed, we’ve had to use it since we’ve been here in ’19. In ’19, we end up in Week 15 and we had nobody that started the year off with us, right?” said Offensive Coordinator Byron Leftwich. “But that’s how we got to meet [tight end] Codey [McElroy], right? That’s how Cyril came here. That’s where those relationships started, really – Week 15, 2019. We understand that we have depth at some positions but we expect to have to use it because that’s the way football is. We just want to get everybody prepared, everybody to be their best selves, understand that they are all a little different in what they bring. But we just want them to be who they are and be the best version of that.”
Miller’s 2021 season left a lot of Bucs fans scratching their head. The speedy 2019 sixth-round draft pick had emerged as a big-play maker during the 2020 Super Bowl run, racking up 501 yards and three touchdowns in the regular season and adding a couple enormous plays in the playoffs. Last year, his playtime dropped by more than a half to 135 snaps and he finished with five receptions and a very unrepresentative 7.6 yards per catch. As is frequently the case when a player seems to inexplicably lose playing time, an underappreciated injury situation was part of the cause. Early in the season, Miller suffered a turf toe injury, which itself may be the most underappreciated ailment in the sport. It put him on injured reserve for seven weeks and he initially struggled to reclaim playing time upon his return.
“I just think Scotty got a bad injury at the wrong part of the year,” said Leftwich. “That injury’s tougher than you guys think. It just was a long time of him not being there, and other guys started stepping up. Scotty’s just got to be Scotty. He’s made plays since he’s been here. The Super Bowl year, I just envision the plays that he made, not just the Green Bay [touchdown]. I envision the Minnesota plays, the plays where he jump-started us a…