He can’t keep getting away with it!

Seriously how do teams keep giving Ryan Fitzpatrick money? How is this still a thing? Ryan Fitzpatrick has entered his 12th year in the league. 12 years. That’s how long this dude has been around. It’s kind of amazing, but yeah, he was a 7th round draft pick by the St. Louis Rams in 2005. A team that doesn’t even exist anymore!

The creepiest part of the Fitzpatrick Cycle is that he always gets his starting job the same way: the guy ahead of him gets hurt before he shows up and plays good enough to get paid before going pumpkin. He replaced Jamie Martin on the Rams. He replaced Carson Palmer on the Bengals. He replaced Trent Edwards on the Bills. He replaced Jake Locker on the Titans. He replaced Geno Smith (jaw incident) on the Jets. Every single QB he’s replaced has gone on to a damaged career afterward. (Only Palmer has recovered somewhat, after several years in hell). Sure, maybe those QBs were all bad (Palmer was for a stretch), but maybe…Ryan Fitzpatrick is a damn voodoo curse.

So if I were a Bucs fan, I’d be terrified for Jameis. He’s the best prospect Fitz has backed up to this point, and he looks like the Bucs future. But now there feels like a very likely chance that by the end of the year we will be talking about how Fitzpatrick lead the Bucs within inches of the playoffs (he’s incapable of actually reaching the playoffs) after Jameis tore his two ACLs. Then he’ll either get paid by the Bucs to stick around as Jameis rehabs into a bad QB like every victim, or another team will pay Fitz money to be their QB, and the cycle begins anew.

The Bucs had such promise. It’s a shame to see it end like this. Remember this comic if the cycle continues.