Bucs Nation
The free fall continues.
If any of you seriously believed that the Buccaneers defense was actually going to do its job after the offense tied the game inside the 2-minute warning, I want to buy whatever hopium you’re huffing.
Sunday’s 23-20 loss to the San Francisco 49ers just produced more of what we’ve largely seen in the last 6 weeks — an ill-prepared defense and cowardly game management decisions that sink an otherwise well-functioning offense.
What’s even more sad is that it’s not even a new issue, as one might recall this team went through the exact same arc last season. The 2023 version of the Bucs took advantage of a weak backend schedule to rebound, and now this year’s group will need to do the same — after the bye, they’ll have the weakest strength of schedule in the entire league.
Todd Bowles has two weeks to get his house in order. Injuries have played a role, but the philosophy and execution have been severely lacking and he needs to fix it. If he can’t, I’m not sure what’s meant to inspire confidence in upper management that a man who’s 16 games under .500 as a head coach is the real answer moving forward.
Let’s do shoutouts and get our little vacation.
Irving and White are arguably a top 5 one-two punch in the NFL, and they largely drove the offense once again.
Irving averaged 5.6 yards per carry, toting the rock 13 times for 73 yards and a touchdown. He added three catches for 14 yards and he continues to show that GM Jason Licht might have actually hit on a running back pick!
White ran less efficiently, averaging just 3.1 YPC on 10 carries, but he also led the team in receiving with 6 catches for 39 yards — including a touchdown and game-saving fourth-down conversion. (also a shout out to Baker Mayfield for stiff-arming Nick Bosa to make said play happen.)
The duo’s complementary skill sets have really taken the Bucs’ ground game into an echelon that it hasn’t seen in nearly a decade when Doug Martin roamed Raymond James Stadium.
Again, not much to write home about here.
We can play the what-if game in various ways, but ultimately an incompetent kicking performance (save for the most important one) was the only factor that kept this defense from giving up 30+ points for the fifth time in the last six weeks. This is a terrible unit, one of the league’s worst with underperformers across all three levels.
Kancey wasn’t one of those Sunday, ticky-tack personal foul penalty aside.
He dominated throughout the contest, collecting 5 total tackles (2 for loss) to go along with a sack and forced fumble. It marked the third game this season he logged multiple TFLs, making him only one of 6 players in the league to do that. Remember, he missed the first...
