Charlie Strong Reacts To Rondé Barber Claims
January 15th, 2026
Rondé Barber
So 2025 Buccaneers defensive line coach Charlie Strong was among the fired assistant coaches at One Buc Palace last week.
Yesterday, Strong sat down with multimedia czar J.P. Peterson on the YouTube show that bears his name. On the docket was the subject of Bucs legend Rondé Barber saying the Bucs defense is too complicated.
Barber has gone there several times. It’s a biting criticism, Joe believes, because it’s a slap at the teaching prowess of coaches and it speaks to them not adjusting to talent.
Strong largely rejected Barber’s notion that a challenging defense held the Bucs back. He also pointed to a steady turnover of personnel because of injuries, especially at cornerback.
“It wasn’t so much the complication, it was more of different people; each and every game here’s a different guy,” Strong said. “Now we gotta teach this guy. So I don’t know if it was the scheme being very complicated, it was more of, ‘Here we got to try to now put it all together with what we have.’ And sometimes it’s guys who had not played that you’re trying to get them ready to go play.”
After the Bucs season ended, Joe talked to someone intimate with daily happenings inside the walls of One Buc Palace. His basic response to a very similar question about Barber’s takes were much more in line with Strong’s comments versus Barber’s musings.
And Joe was told defensive players flat out getting beat and making elementary errors were another huge factor in the sad defense, not complexity of the scheme.