Josh McCown Could Miss Several Weeks

SATURDAY, 11:25am: Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times tweets that McCown has a “significant” sprain and will visit a hand specialist on Monday. As a result, it’s unlikely that the quarterback will play this weekend.

However, in an earlier tweet, Stroud said the team was optimistic that McCown would play against the Steelers, perhaps indicating that the quarterback’s injury is not as severe as initially thought.

FRIDAY, 8:08pm: Buccaneers quarterback Josh McCown injured his thumb in the 56-14 blowout loss to the Falcons Thursday night. Early on, it looked as if the injury was not serious, but Alex Marvez of Fox Sports 1 is reporting that it could force McCown out of the linup for several weeks (via Twitter).

McCown went under a second test that found the injury to be severe enough to sideline the Buccaneers’ free agent signal caller.

Mike Glennon will be slated to start in his place, as he filled in for McCown during the Thursday Night Game.

McCown had been struggling mightily during his two and a half games as a starter in Tampa Bay. He failed to move the offense, and the team remained winless through three games. Even still, head coach Lovie Smith remains committed to him as the starter, according to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times.

“Josh is our starter,” Smith said. “We’re looking at one game right now. It would be simple if Josh was the only guy who played bad. It seems like the only guy I’m asked about is Josh. You can ask that about quite a few people starting with me. Am I still the head coach based on that effort? But a little more goes into it than that.”

Now that McCown will miss action, Glennon will have an opportunity to put his stamp on a job that he performed admirably at just last season. As a rookie, Glennon went 4-9 as a starter for a bad Buccaneers team. His touchdown to interception ratio was better than two to one during the 2013 campaign.