Bucky Irving doesn't care how the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win, as long as they come out with the victory.
The Buccaneers defeated the Atlanta Falcons 16-0 on a rain-soaked afternoon behind a record-setting day by their running backs. Led by Irving and Kenneth Gainwell, Tampa Bay ran for a franchise-record 324 rushing yards while Baker Mayfield completed zero passes.
When asked after the game if he cares about the weather while playing, Irving kept the focus on the magnitude of beating an NFC South rival for the second straight game.
"I really don't care, bro," Irving said after the game when asked if he cares what the weather is. "Like I always said, man, the past two years that I've been here, we started off smoking hot, and towards the back end
of the season, we'll kind of tumble. But just being able to have some adversity, man, life is about adversity. If you don't go through nothing, if you want everything handed to you, I don't want it no other way. I want it hard because that's how I had to get it my whole life. So just being able to know things are not going to be handed to you. We got 32 football teams; that's pretty good. Everybody got the same goal. Everybody want to get to the Super Bowl."
Irving is in the midst of his third season with the Buccaneers. After winning the NFC South as a rookie, they stumbled last year and missed the division after losing seven of their final nine games.
After starting 0-4, the Buccaneers are looking to bounce back and win the NFC South for the fifth time in the past six seasons. Only four teams in NFL history have made the playoffs after starting 1-5, with the 2020 Washington Commanders as the last team to do so.
"Everybody want to win, but what are you willing to sacrifice to get to that?" asked Irving after the game. "Everything's not going to be perfect all the time. So just being able to know that we had some adversity early on, and just being able to stay on the course and keep it going, and trust our coaches to put us in the right position to win every week."
The Buccaneers will look to carry their momentum into next week's road matchup against the 5-2 Chicago Bears on Sunday Night Football.
This article originally appeared on Bucs Wire: Bucky Irving's passionate response on Buccaneers' rain-soaked win over Falcons
