Graham Barton was caught between a rock and a hard place last season.
When speaking last week at the NFL beehive that was the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis, Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht was asked at least a half-dozen times as he went through the media car wash, “What happened to the Bucs?”
The Bucs last season jumped out to a 6-2 record and then lost seven of their final nine games to miss the playoffs.
There is no doubt injuries hurt the Bucs, specifically on offense. Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield never lined up behind the starting five on the offensive line that was so good the previous season. Not once.
Licht didn’t want to blame injuries. Joe doesn’t blame him. It sounds like weak sauce when you consider a team like San Francisco, which was also decimated by injuries, found a way to make the playoffs in maybe the league’s best division and get to the divisional round while the Bucs tucked their tails between their legs and curled up in the corner like dogs.
(Harsh? Perhaps, but Joe’s calling it like he sees it. The last time a Bucs coach oversaw his team — also with high expectations — laying down that badly, Raheem Morris got the boot.)
But Joe is trying to be fair. When an offensive line gets torn up like the Bucs did last year, and the team basically had to go dumpster diving for guards, using refuse from the county landfill to start at guard, no wonder the offense struggled.
By way of NextGen Stats, when the Bucs had to rely on Buffalo castoff Dan Feeney and (not that) Michael Jordan, the Bucs were starting two of the worst guards in the game.
(The Bucs may have been better off signing the NASCAR owner Michael Jordan.)
While Jordan was pretty good in pass blocking, no guard charted by NextGen Stats was worse at pass blocking. Feeney was just downright bad, no matter what the Bucs tried to accomplish.
Sean Payton is one of several NFL coaches who believe guard play is the key to a quarterback’s success. Yes, guard play, not tackles.
So one could make the argument that when Cody Mauch and Ben Bredeson were lost for the season with injuries (in the early part of the season, Bredeson played center in a reconfigured offensive line), Payton’s philosophy likely came into play.
The moral to this story? Have better backups.
Hat tip: @PullingGuardd.