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The Buccaneers and Cowboys open the regular season in Tampa on September 9 on NBC. Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy has said he will rest his starters in the final preseason game on August 29 to prepare his team.
“For me, Game 4 is for players competing for the final places on the roster,” said McCarthy. “That’s what I believe in, and it definitely is for us this year.”
Different shots for different people.
Bucs coach Bruce Arians said his plan was to rest his starters this week against Tennessee and play them in the final preseason game on Aug. 28 against the Texans.
“Looking at the two practices [against Tennessee] – as far as I know they’ll go physically – we probably won’t play starters, ”Arians said, via Scott Reynolds of pewterreport.com. “I don’t really want to hand over our starters [along the offensive line] or put them at all. The offensive line could only play in this game out of necessity. We will see how it goes.
Arians’ reasoning is logical: he doesn’t want his starters to pass 19 days between two games. If they play in the last preseason game, they will have another 12 days until the season opens. (Of course, last year teams didn’t have pre-season games until the season opener.)
“We’ll play this by ear, but my plan for now is to play them a lot in this [final preseason] ball game, because we don’t play for two weeks afterwards, ”Arians said. “I know our guys don’t want to hit each other for 10 days, so we’ll probably play them more in this game than any other.”
The Bucs played their starters for six snaps on both sides of the ball in their first preseason game on Saturday.
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