Big game.
Finally, the football gods have heard Joe’s non-stop pleas.
With the exception of the second quarter, when 49ers beat up backup quarterback Mac Jones looked like he was playing flag football, standing in the pocket flat-footed with zero fear because the nearest white jersey was in Seffner, the Bucs clamped down on Jones and the 49ers today and discovered that sacks really do lead to punts.
And wins!
The Bucs finished with six (!) sacks Sunday. An incredible amount. Even more startling was the Bucs had half of those sacks in the first quarter alone. The last time the Bucs pulled that off was November 2014 against the Bears.
And YaYa Diaby was a force today. He had two sacks, his second coming late in the game to help seal the win.
YaYa must like San Francisco. In his rookie year, 2023, YaYa went wilding on the 49ers, too. He also had a pair of sacks that day in Santa Clara.
Maybe the Bucs should hypnotize YaYa into thinking every team is San Francisco. Maybe YaYa likes sourdough bread — if so, the Bucs need to feed that to YaYa before kickoffs of all games.
YaYa’s fourth-quarter sack was a big help in the Bucs holding the 49ers (with Christian McCaffrey) to a lone field goal. That was the ballgame.
YaYa said the Bucs tried nothing different in the second half. The same attack mode the Bucs had in the first quarter was the same in the second half.
And YaYa thought they could get after Mac Jones on Sunday.
> “It was the same mentality we had in the first half” as the second half,” YaYa said. “Just get after it. We felt like we had an advantage of getting to the quarterback We just kept pounding.”
The second quarter the Bucs must have gotten away from that attack plan. San Francisco scored 13 points in the second quarter and it appeared Jones was morphing into Kirk Cousins. He stood back in the pocket with no fear of an angry opponent and he was picking apart the Bucs defense.
Jones finished the first half with a galling 200 yards passing.
But then the Bucs put the clamp down on the 49ers in the second half.
That is what we have been implementing,” YaYa said of the near-shutout defense in the final 30 minutes of football. “Especially going into this week.
> Facing the 49ers “was a good week to showcase \[the Bucs’ defense\] against a really good team.” YaYa said.
And after a 30-19 win, it is the Bucs who are a pretty good team. They stand at 5-1, even with the offense almost destroyed with injuries.
That second-half defense is a playoff defense, folks.