The Bucs are kicking themselves for all the special teams mistakes this season.
Bucs punter Riley Dixon is in his 10th NFL season, with nine blocked punts for his career. But two have come in 16 attempts this year.
Bucs punter Riley Dixon is in his 10th NFL season, with nine blocked punts for his career. But two have come in 16 attempts this year.
TAMPA — Bucs special teams coach Thomas McGaughey said putting blocked punts on tape in the NFL makes opponents smell blood and they won’t stop circling.
“That’s part of the territory. When you put chum in the water, sharks are coming,” McGaughey said.
At this rate, the Bucs are going to need a bigger boat.
In four games, McGaughey’s special teams have had two punts and a field goal blocked with two of those kicks returned for touchdowns.
It happened again on their first attempt last Sunday against the Eagles when punter Riley Dixon’s kick was blocked by linebacker Cameron Latu and scooped up by Sydney Brown, who returned it 35 yards for a touchdown to give Philadelphia a 7-0 lead.
A week earlier, the Jets’ Will McDonald blocked a 43-yard field goal attempt by Chase McLaughlin and returned it 50 yards for a touchdown, gifting his team a 27–26 lead with just under two minutes remaining.
![Jets defensive end Will McDonald IV (9) blocks a field-goal attempt by Chase McLaughlin (4) during the fourth quarter of a Sept. 21 game.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 620 413"/%3E)
Jets defensive end Will McDonald IV (9) blocks a field-goal attempt by Chase McLaughlin (4) during the fourth quarter of a Sept. 21 game.
Against the Texans, Dixon had a punt blocked that was recovered by the Texans at the Tampa Bay 35-yard line and led to a field goal.
Fortunately for the Bucs against the Jets, Baker Mayfield rescued his team in the final two minutes to set up McLaughlin’s winning 36-yard field goal.
Some blame might belong to Dixon, who entered 2025 as the NFL’s active leader with seven blocked punts in a 10-year career. That averaged to one in every 95 punts. But this season, he’s had two blocked in 16 attempts.
By comparison, the rest of the NFL has only two blocked in 429 punts combined. Dixon has been known to get the ball off his foot slowly in past stints with the Broncos, Rams and Giants.
While McGaughey indicated the blocks weren’t on Dixon, the punter didn’t let himself off the hook.
“You could say clearly the ball needs to be gone faster because it wasn’t gone fast enough,” Dixon said. “It can always be that way. That’s the unique part about punting is it can always be better. If every punt gets off and is downed at the 1-yard line, if it’s not that, then you could say it could always be better.”
![Bucs punter Riley Dixon on recent miscues: "That’s the unique part about punting is it can always be better."](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 620 413"/%3E)
Bucs punter Riley Dixon on recent miscues: "That’s the unique part about punting is it can always be better."
McGaughey put the blame on the lack of protection and adjusting to teams overloading on one side.
“If you go back and look at a lot of the punts he’s had blocked, it ain’t had nothing to do with Riley,” McGaughey said. “There’s been a couple that have kind of not been good for him, you know? But I’ve had him, I’ve coached Riley for five years now. I know exactly who he is and what he likes doing and how he likes doing it.
“And we’ve just got to make sure he’s comfortable with the protection around him. We’ve got to make sure the protection is tight and all that stuff so he can have nice, comfortable pockets. No different than Baker (Mayfield) being back there being able to throw the ball. It’s the same thing. He can’t be, you know, flinching in the pocket, right? We’ve got to be able to just give him a nice pocket so he can punt and feel comfortable.”
McGaughey said there will be personnel changes on special teams in hopes of improving the punt protection.
“Obviously over the last couple of weeks, there’s been some plays that have been made, game-changing plays — we know we can’t do that," McGaughey said. “... All those things, we’ve addressed them — the two blocked punts, the blocked field goal — fundamental techniques. Simple Day 1 stuff that we’ve coached from the beginning.
“It’s frustrating. Nobody is more frustrated than I am and the guys in the room. Guys are really disappointed just to start off the way we did, having a good Week 1 and then regressing as we have, it’s extremely disappointing. But collectively as a group, our job is just to get better.”
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