Antione Winfield and the Bucs defense didn’t have an awful day today. But they needed to be perfect.
Whether it was a young player or a veteran, each was in agreement: The defense needed to play better.
Hey, let’s think about this: Joe thought, and believed many others did, too, that Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins were going to light up the thin Bucs secondary.
That did not happen.
Higgins had 59 yards receiving. Chase had 12 (!) yards receiving. Neither had a touchdown. So in that respect, the defense got the job done. What they forgot about were other receivers. Journeyman tight end Mike Gesicki, for example, had 78 yards and a touchdown.
The way cornerback Zyon McCollum virtually got the defense off the field on the Bengals first possession seemed to suggest the defense was going to have a day. It better than expected but they had to overcome 24 Bengals points after turnovers. Hard to do.
Rookie linebacker Josiah Trotter didn’t hear it.
> “If our offense has turnovers, we \[as a defense\] have to create our own to help out,” Trotter said.
Trotter is a man of his word. He housed a pick off Joe Burrow to keep the Bucs in the game.
> “It’s the small details we have to clean up as a defense that we harped on in OTAs and this summer,” McCollum said. Joe asked him what those were, and he decided to keep that intel close to the vest.
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> “There are some things that are unacceptable.”
Well, Joe can think of one. That’s when Burrow took off running up the middle in Bucs real estate and Tykee Smith went headhunting and got flagged for a personal foul for hitting Burrow.
When McCollum was asked about how the Bucs defense held Chase and Higgins in check, McCollum said that was a pathway to how they have to prepare each week no matter the name of the receiver.
No, the Bucs didn’t play perfect defense. They needed to, in order for the team to get over four giveaways by the offense. But the defense certainly played well enough that if the offense had its act together, a win was on the table.
Players Joe spoke with were sort of peeved: They think they let a big fish off the hook by playing sloppy ball.