Jeff Tedford will not appear on the first injury report of the regular season Wednesday, but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator is questionable for Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers.
“He’s getting better,” coach Lovie Smith said. “He stopped through this weekend. We’re taking our time with him. He’s getting better each day. When he’ll be back here full-time, I don’t know. When he’ll be available full-time, whether he’ll be available for the game this week and all those questions, we don’t have answered right now.”
The Buccaneers have said little about Tedford’s health following a “medical procedure” that kept him away from the team for the fourth and final preseason game and during the final roster cutdown process.
“He’s getting better and we’ll see how all that plays out,” Smith said. “In the meantime, the rest of our offensive staff will pick up for Jeff, similar to how we did it last week, with all of the guys really pitching in.”
Tedford spent the previous 11 seasons at Cal, where he was the winningest coach in the school’s history. He worked with two former first-round draft picks — quarterbacks Kyle Boller and Aaron Rodgers — during his tenure.
Before coaching the Golden Bears, Tedford was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Oregon from 1998 to 2001.
Smith went through several offensive coordinators in his previous stint with the Chicago Bears, including Mike Martz and Mike Tice.
Smith replaced Greg Schiano as Tampa Bay’s head coach in January. He worked for the Buccaneers under Tony Dungy as linebackers coach from 1996-2000.
