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Won’t unload on offense.
The Bucs offense, outside of a handful of plays, stunk yesterday.
Talk about dink-and-dunk, gee. Joe isn’t anti-dink-and-dunk but man, when you need 8-12 yards for a first down and you’re throwing screens and having receivers run short routes hoping they would break tackles, that is out of hand.
When faced with a third down, the objective is to get the ball past the sticks. It’s generally easier to do this when your receivers are catching passes past the sticks, not five yards on the wrong side of the chains against a fundamentally sound defense.
(Joe guesses maybe he shouldn’t use the term “chains” any longer. No chain gang means it’s easier for the NFL to rig first down calls via “virtual” measurements.)
Despite the offense being, well, offensive, Bucs coach Todd Bowles refused to unload on the Bucs offense after the game. He said it takes all of us, winning or losing.
> “All the way around – we didn’t play well on all three phrases,” Bowles said. “We didn’t have any rhythm on offense, we didn’t have any rhythm on defense, we didn’t have any rhythm on special teams, and it showed.”
While the defense didn’t play great, it was still a one-score game late. Joe gets what Bowles is trying to do here and he’s not wrong. It’s not like the defense played like the 2002 Bucs.
But son of a gun, if the Bucs had any type of offense yesterday they could have won that game.
On the Bucs’ second-last drive that fizzled at the Patriots-27, Bucs offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard called for a screen pass to Rachaad White on fourth-and-three. White lost three yards.
That said it all.