Tom Brady will play in Buccaneers preseason opener and here’s how long Bruce Arians plans to play him

Tom Brady is going to start at quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their preseason opener, head coach Bruce Arians announced Monday. Brady, coming off surgery to repair a torn MCL this offseason, has spoken up on getting some reps for Tampa Bay this preseason.

Arians is granting Brady his wish, but how long will he play Saturday’s preseason opener against the Cincinnati Bengals?

“Everybody will play,” Arians said to reporters at Buccaneers training camp Monday. “We’ll just wait to see how it goes. It’s normally a drive or two. It won’t be many.”

Arians laid out a blueprint of how the Buccaneers will attack the preseason in terms of playing time. With the preseason schedule reduced from four games to three, teams will have different strategies how they’ll play their first team players.

“Don’t know how much, but everybody will play (the first game),” Arians said. “The Titans week (Week 2 of the preseason), we’re going against them for two practices — then we’ll determine how that is as far as who plays in that one. The last one we’ll play a bunch (of players).”

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Whether Brady plays all three of Tampa Bay’s preseason contests is to be determined, but he’ll be getting some reps come Saturday. Brady didn’t have the benefit of playing in the preseason last year due to the NFL canceling the exhibition portion of the schedule because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The game reps will come for Brady this year — and maybe a better start to the regular season as well for the seven-time Super Bowl champion. After Monday’s practice evaluation by Arians, live game reps are a good thing.

“That was probably the worst offensive practice we had in three years,” Arians said. “Kind of a pattern of behavior, but after a day off — our offense just stinks. Dropped passes, missed assignments on basic plays. It’s just lack of concentration.

“They just got to grow up and man up — it’s been identified. You got to fix it.”