Bucs Week 17: On the Deck of Sinking Ship
You’ll sometimes hear talking heads in TV-land or Podcastopia talk about teams manufacturing wins or win production, especially in baseball.
The Bucs manufacture losses.
While initially I planned to excoriate OC Josh Grizzard for handing the ball off 33 times in a losing effort, it’s become clear through press conferences this week that this was a Todd Bowles-led gameplan.
You can’t build an offensive gameplan around keeping your defense off the field. That can’t be the primary function of your offense. It just can’t.
It doesn’t matter who plays on your team, at what position. The primary objective with the ball in your hands should be to score as many points as possible, in the most efficient manner possible.
For an offense like the Broncos with Bo Nix and semi-limited weapons, that might mean spreading the ball around using lots of screens and short, quick throws, an east-west run game with a shifty running back, and an occasional splash play, and let the defense do the rest.
The Steelers ought to rely on a heavy run game and play action, because it plays to the strengths of their two headed monster of a backfield and seemingly endless effective tight ends.
The Bucs are not a power run team by any stretch. Especially with two offensive guards who started the season on practice squads and an offensive line that’s underperforming as a whole. With all four of their top wide receivers, all of their running backs, and all of their tight ends healthy (first time they’ve had all of their skill position starters all season, by the way), there is no defense they should face that makes them revert from an air raid-style offense.
Yes, Baker Mayfield is underperforming. By a lot, actually. But taking the ball out of his hands lost you this game. For the first half of the season, he was just about the sole reason they won games. You dance with the girl that brought you, and right now the Bucs coaching staff is choosing not to let him play his way out of the slump. They might as well be waving a giant white flag for the rest of this season.
The defense, on the other hand, actually finally gave us a decent game. Aside from a pretty terrible play call from Todd Bowles to end the half, opting to hand a floundering Panthers offense (96 total yards before the final drive of the half) a bonus four points by sending seven on a blitz with 12 seconds and Jamel Dean on an island against their best receiver, rather than sit back and hold the Panthers to a field goal.
Bowles just can’t win. When he opts to sit back, his four-man rush isn’t good enough to generate pressures, and his DBs struggle to stay in zone coverage much longer than 2.00 seconds. When he blitzes, his DBs get beat in man coverage.
The seat has never been hotter for him. And I’d argue it hasn’t been this hot in a long while. This is right up there with Raheem Morris’ 10 game losing streak, Greg Schiano’s 0-8 start, and Lovie Smith losing three straight one score games (and a bonus blowout) to finish 6-10 and miss the playoffs.
This team (and especially the offense) is too talented to be anywhere near losing this division. Even with this defense, they really ought to be better than an 8-9 four seed.
The great news is, they may get to face the Rams team that beat the tar out of them just a few short weeks ago at home in the wildcard, and inevitably talk themselves into keeping this coaching staff barring a retirement from a certain someone. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and he’ll get the Arians-style front office “promotion”.
Luckily, the Bucs are in must win mode. Or at least they ought to be. I guess I can’t necessarily predict the effort level from the roster or coaching staff at this point.
They still somehow control their own destiny. Win both games, they’re the four seed. A win against the Panthers and any Falcons loss, the Bucs are still the four seed. A loss to Miami and a Panthers win against Seattle, and the week 18 matchup against Carolina will have no effect on the Bucs playoff chances. But it won’t matter. The Bucs will very likely lose to whichever NFC West wildcard team they play in the first round.
The Bucs will now face the Miami Dolphins who are a similarly sinking ship with a lame-duck head coach at the helm. This season has gone about as sideways as possible. They’ve been Murphy’s Law’d all the way to a six win season, with Tyreek Hill suffering an early dislocated knee and Tua Tagovailoa looking as bad as he has in his entire career. It’s been a wild track of regression for a quarterback that led the league in yards just a few years ago, and he was benched last week for rookie Quinn Ewers with Zach Wilson serving as the backup and Tagovailoa serving as the emergency third quarterback.
There are very few bright spots for the Dolphins right now. The defense is not good. They don’t create a lot of pressures, sacks, or turnovers, they surrender the 8th worst yards per carry on the ground, and the third worst adjusted yards per attempt through the air. They’ll also be without safety Minkah Fitzpatrick and linebacker Tyrel Dodson. This should be a game where they hand the ball off 30 times, but not because it’s the gameplan. This should be a game where they run up the score and run the clock out.
Defensively, this SHOULDN’T be a tough matchup. Naturally it will be much tougher than it needs to be. This offense does actually have nice weapons on the roster. De’Von Achane looks like one of the best backs in the league, which is saying something with career-defining years for Jonathan Taylor, Christian McCaffrey, Bijan Robinson, and more.
What was once a team philosophy-defining run defense for Tampa Bay has certainly struggled a little bit more than usual this season, but I would expect them to zero in on Achane to attempt to contain the engine of this Dolphins offense.
The Dolphins do still have two competent receiving threats. Darren Waller has put together a nice season for a player that’s returned from retirement. After having four touchdowns in the first three weeks, he only has two since (both of which came in the same game against the Steelers two weeks ago). But he’s logged 40+ yards in three of his last four games, and he’s been about as reliable a target they’ve got. Especially against a Bucs defense that just gave up a historic performance to Kyle Pitts.
Jaylen Waddle is set to top 100 targets and 1000 yards for the first time in two years as he becomes the centerpiece of this passing game. Luckily the Bucs have only allowed 100+ yards in a game to a wide receiver three times this season (Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Kendrick Bourne, Mack Hollins), but Waddle just about fits the archetype of what’s beat the Bucs this year.
For the fifth consecutive week, the Bucs are facing a team they ought to beat. On paper, they are very clearly the better team.
Based on the way they’ve played in all facets of the game for the last three weeks, there’s a very real possibility that they lose this game.
Prediction: Bucs W, 27-25
