Josh Freeman Injury: Is Bucs QB Inactive Due to Injury or Management?

Josh Freeman may be playing against a tougher defense than he anticipated: his management.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-7) are in a win-or-go-home mentality right now. If they don’t win against the division rival Carolina Panthers this week, the Bucs will almost certainly miss the playoffs.

To make matters worse, the report is that Freeman will not be starting at quarterback today. Instead, Tampa Bay will look to Josh Johnson.

Buccaneers and NFL writer for the St. Petersburg Times Rick Stroud is reporting on twitter:

While the fact that Freeman had been limited in practice all week had him questionable, many thought there was no chance he didn’t play. Some people are clamoring for a conspiracy theory, but Tampa Bay has a much more feasible solution to the problem.

Bucs head coach Raheem Morris told ESPN about another problem with his quarterback:

"

Well, he hurt his shoulder at the end of (Sunday's loss at Tennessee) on that bobbled sneak. He kind of got tackled and kind of hurt his shoulder. It is sore. Right now he is day-to-day. We were hoping he would be a full go today, but he was limited. We will have the opportunity to hopefully evaluate him tomorrow and the day after that and get him going, to see if he can get the chance to play.

"

It's obvious they didn't feel he could go.

With ligament damage in his thumb that has clearly affected his play and now a shoulder injury, Morris and the rest of the coaching staff had to make the decision to sit him down and rest his ailing wounds.

There was an incident during the bye week in which Freeman was hurt while he was at the shooting range with his father. The injury happened to the same finger Freeman had hurt the week prior and rumors have run rampant that his thumb was hurt because of the gun range incident.

Morris has gone out of his way to defend Freeman. That’s called keeping things in house and handling business in house. Let's see where it goes from here.

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