Begging for sacks.
Some day, 10, 15, 20 years from now, Joe hopes whoever convinced KitKat-eating Bucs coach Todd Bowles that a pass rush is a secondary priority for a defense, that the same guy calls Bowles up and apologizes for sending him into forced retirement.
That’s where this seems to be headed barring a significant and quick turnaround.
Joe wants to go absolutely wild about the irresponsible pass rush development — or lack of a pass rush development — this coaching staff has. Why hasn’t Joe done that? Because he’s been conditioned over the years not to expect a pass rush!
The saga of the Bucs’ edge rush is like romance novels. The only things that change are the dates and the names. The results are the same, novel after novel, or in the case of the Bucs’ edge rush, year after year.
Joe Tryon-Shoyinka, Chris Braswell, Rueben Bain (for now) are the biggest names. And then there is YaYa Diaby, who is looking for his first sack of the season and is still trying to match his career high-water mark set as a rookie (7.5).
It doesn’t matter what the guy’s name is, the results are the same with Bucs edge rushers.
You may as well have a mailbox on the field or a lawn chair and those items can rush the passer better than whoever the Bucs put out there from their line and edge rushers.
Only the Bucs defense would bend over for a horrible quarterback like Deshaun Watson but former NFL scout-turned-media celebrity Daniel Jeremiah, speaking on his podcast “[Move the Sticks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFeVzwVjqis),” there was one major reason why Watson had so much success against the Bucs.
When Watson can stand in the pocket with little to no traffic, Jeremiah says Watson still has enough skills to be productive.
And when a team faces the Bucs, they know their quarterback will have plenty of time to throw. Hell, they could order an Uber Eats and still not worry about getting their jersey dirty facing the Bucs.
Jeremiah’s producer, Jack Foster, had a very telling stat. The Bucs are 2-9 in their last 11 games (that’s getting dangerously close to Raheem Morris territory). In that span, the Bucs have 15 sacks — tied for the lowest in the NFL with the 49ers.
However, when the Bucs last year jumped out to a 6-2 mark, the Bucs had 25 sacks in those eight games.
As Jeremiah put it, if the Bucs had any sort of decent pass rush, they could have tied Watson in knots.
But who needs a pass rush when you can craft an “exotic” blitz that won’t get home?