Bucs Report – Special to Sports Talk Florida
This was a really bad game all around from the Buccaneers back-ups. There wasn’t a lot to like, but that’s not to say it was completely devoid of positives.
The pass rush against the Jaguars back-ups was god-like and Jose Ramirez was the one leading the charge. The Buccaneers had five sacks, and Ramirez had three of them. Chris Braswell was also garnering double teams already, which is really funny. On offense, the run game had some early success, but the Bucs could barely hold on to the ball and were behind the sticks so often they couldn’t run the ball ever.
Yeah, Now it’s Time for the Bad!
Let’s rip the band-aid off y’all. The Jaguars converted 3rd-and-15, 3rd-and-10, and 3rd-and-9 in the first half. Was Trevor Lawrence starting? Oh no, it was Mac Jones, a quarterback that was utterly wrecked by the Patriots. The secondary provided so little protection I heard the Secret Service may start reaching out to them for a job. Tavierre Thomas in particular was really bad. He allowed a deep TD on third down because he just couldn’t keep up with Parker Washington. Andrew Hayes once again played like shit, but at least he forced a fumble. And Bryce Hall had a bad game, allowing two third downs and while he got an interception, he did get called for pass interference on the same play. A PI that really seemed unnecessary since Mac Jones seemed to have under thrown the ball badly.
Not Just A Secondary Problem
That’s not to say other areas of the defense weren’t bad. They couldn’t tackle Tank “Derrick Henry” Bigsby if the lives of their families were on the line. And it wasn’t just back-ups. KJ Britt looked like Devin White on more than a few occasions. Very worrying considering he was considered to be a safe LB with good tackling form.
I think though we have finally settled the debate between who is worse, Kyle Trask or John Wolford. It’s Wolford. Trask wasn’t exactly great in either weeks, but at least he made some plays. He had good pocket awareness and had a nifty TD after escaping a sack. Wolford had all of the pocket awareness of Stevie Wonder. But a Stevie Wonder that was also deaf. They couldn’t get anything going, especially in the second half. It was three-and-out after three-and-out. At the end of the game, they only had 207 yards of offense to the Jags 339 yards and had the ball for 21:45 compared to the Jags 38:15. Pathetic.
At the end of the day, while I am not exactly happy with the secondary being carved like Thanksgiving turkey. But these are still back-ups and Todd Bowles wasn’t even calling the plays (although it really didn’t look that different). With all that said, is team really not going to sign Stephon Gillmore?
It was the defense just for the PTSD it gave me.
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