Ask Bucs Nation

But he’ll give up about one big pass per game. Ronde Barber is still good, but he’s a gambler and doesn’t have the speed to recover if he guesses wrong. He spends a lot of time in the slot, though, and he’s pretty dominant there. Both those guys are great against the run.
EJ Biggers is our third corner, and he’s been really solid in pass coverage this year, but he’s not stellar in run support.

Both our safeties are solid, and Cody Grimm is stellar against the run, but they lack range which doesn’t help the fact that we give up a big pass play or two each game.

anyone until our DBs start playing up to par.. j/k.

Seriously though I would think their biggest receiving weapon is Mike Williams, but the our team is probably aware of him already so the biggest one that would surprise us would probably be Arrelious Benn.. but than again Spurlock is there too lol.. they remind me of the Broncos receivers..

Our receiving weapons are pretty obvious on tape. Mike Williams is our best receiver, and teams seem to be catching on as the Panthers were doubling him all day. That left Kellen WInslow open, and he took advantage. Arrelious Benn is getting better each week as well, and even Michael Spurlock has played well.

I’ll say that if Sammie Stroughter is healthy for this game he’s a guy you could be surprised by as he hasn’t done much this week, but he’s a good slot receiver.

Up until last week, Spur came up with a big catch at a pivotal point in the game. However, Arrelious (aka “Rejus”) has been emerging at the flanker position the past few wweeks and is giving the Buccaneers the makings of a true tandem threat on the outside with the needs-no-introduction Mike Williams. Sure, they’re young, and there’s always a chance one of them hits the wall, but Williams and Benn appear to be budding stars.

In short, don’t sleep on Rejus on Sunday.

He’ll get beat once or twice per game, but handle his man just fine the rest of the game.

The rest of the line isn’t nearly that good, though. James Lee is currently starting at RT and he looked terrible in pass protection against the Falcons, though he looked a lot better against the Panthers. If Trueblood is back and starts then that isn’t much of an improvement, as he’s always been a liability in pass pro. Davin Joseph used to be dominant at RG but he hasn’t looked the same this year, really disappointing. Jeff Faine at center is scrappy and solid, but not great. Ted Larsen at LG is still a real question mark, as a rookie he has been inconsistent and he gets lost at times, but he had a great game against the Panthers especially run blocking.

Still, our offensive line is probably our weakest unit after defensive line.

Last year, he handled faced some pretty solid outside rushers in Clay Matthews, Peppers, Demarcus Ware, etc. Peppers totaled 3 sacks in 2 matchups, but Penn shut down Ware and most others he faced. It’ll be a fun chess match on Sunday.

your eyes deceive you if you saw otherwise. He missed some passes but he threw them where they couldn’t be picked off (except the Hail Mary, yes let’s rail on him for that a few more times). When it mattered he found a way.

The St. Louis game he played much better. His biggest problem there was holding onto the ball a few times. Still, he hit open receivers for TONS of big plays and most of them were not risky throws. He also had 3 TD’s called back on holds and delay of game. I’ll break him down later in the week but he really had a solid performance.

But it’s getting better. The run defense had a halfway decent game against the Panthers where they gave up some runs, but had a lot of stuffs as well. Hopefully they can build on that, but they’ve looked atrocious for much of the year too.

We have a young and banged up defensive line. Heck, we just had to sign a couple of guys off the Pittsburgh Steelers’ practice squad to add depth. The biggest problem is that we have a middle linebacker who is superior in pass coverage for a LB, but unspectacular in run support, to put it very mildly.

And he had his best game last Sunday. You can see flashes of dominance in the trenches, but he hasn’t put it all together yet.

Freeman’s good, but he still has some problems with beating the blitz, throwing up some wobbly jumpballs off his back foot at times.

Against the defense, I’d just start running and not let up.

We haven’t really been gashed by a TE this year, but Barrett Ruud(MLB) has looked iffy in coverage this year, and our safeties aren’t great. Could be we try putting Ronde Barber on Vernon Davis, as we put him on Tony Gonzalez against the Falcons which worked reasonably well.

That is all.

And he’s been stellar this season. He put in a lot of work in the offseason, and it’s paying off now. Honestly, I think given time and if he doesn’t injure himself too much Josh Freeman can develop into an elite QB in this league. As a second-year QB who started just 9 games last season he’s calling out protections, changing plays and has full control of the offense. I’m really impressed with what he’s been able to do this season.

Actually getting a little bit better, but…..we just allowed a 100-yard game to Carolina 4th-string RB Mike Goodson. So….take that for what it’s worth.

He’s a good but not great route runner. He’s fast, but he’s not a blazer. He is really physical. But the best thing he does is use his body to keep the defender away from the ball, and he does a great job of catching the ball at its highest point.

He’s also a good runner after the catch, he consistently makes the first defender miss.

On all accounts. I’ve written about this multiple times. The guys is a total package receiver.

still grumbling about that

i don’t think many Bucs fans would agree with that. sure he’s had two season ending injuries and he’s not as dominant as he was in his rookie year, but he DID give us 1000 yards in that first year, he’s a beast at pass-protection, he’s a leader both on and off the field, is helping Blount learn the game now, and still shows flashes when our O-line pulls their collective heads out of their collective asses (see the 45-yard touchdown run last week).

To answer your first question though, very relieved that we have what seems to be a back of the future in Blount. As much as we like Caddy, we all know he’s not that…

Though Michael Clayton has without a doubt been much more damaging, as has the late Gaines Adams (RIP).

Cadillac is a true fan favourite because of the way he plays the game, and how he came back from his two devastating knee injuries. It’s safe to say he’s never been worth his draft status, but he’s still been valuable. The past games where Blount got the majority of the carries he’s been a stellar third-down back, and it’s likely his future value will be at that position.

That’s not true

M. Williams was on track for 1100 yards, 9 TDs.

Josh Morgan? Not so much.

And an easy schedule has helped, a lot. However, this team has gotten better in every game and the second half schedule is still very easy. You’re right that we’ve been lucky – being 6-3 with a negative points record doesn’t happen without luck, and I expect us to take a small step backwards next year when the schedule will likely be harder. But the future is very bright.

I think you’re underestimating Stylez G. White at DE though, and while the secondary gives up a big play per game it’s still very good.

But they won’t collapse the second half, because the schedule in the second half is just as easy as the schedule in the first half.

What’s impressed me most is that the team hasn’t missed a beat through a lot of injuries.

Teams may be weak, but you are winning, and that’s the most important thing. A loss is a loss is a loss.

We almost beat a lot of good teams, but didn’t. Ultimately it’s still a loss. But even games we should win, @CAR we still lost.

As for Freeman, he looks REALLY good. I will be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of his coming out of college, but he has WAY exceeded my expectations. I read some stat that he already had like 8 come from behind wins in 4th quarter already? I was like WHOA. Everyone seems to know this is a QB driven league except the Niners head coach, when he said that position was important, but not that important, I almost burned my Niner jersey in my pellet stove and turned into a badmitten fan.

I think the Bucs are moving up in the world, and that’s more than a LOT of teams can say. That being said, I think you guys are playing a little above your pay grade if you will, whereas we are playing below our pay grade. I think the Niners are a better team with even a competent coach. I’m really interested to see which Niners team comes out on Sunday. Is it the team that dominated SEA in first half, shut down Brees for most part, held Manning without a TD last year, or the Niners that got blown out by KC, beaten by CAR, gave up game winning TD by Favre last year, and gets out coached on a weekly basis.

I know I’m rambling, I guess the main point here is Bucs have the wins, we don’t. However, I don’t think talentwise they are a 6-3 team, and we aren’t a 3-6 team. I expect the Niners to win at home in the slop.

But I think aside from Suh, most DL guys take a while to get up to speed in the NFL.

As for first place, I don’t think there is anyway that happens. Not with those two teams. I read Clayton’s mailbag today and he said he thought TB would get to 9 wins and still miss the playoffs.

He didn’t have an immediate impact, but there are a couple plays in each game where he destroys his opponents and then barely misses on the sack. The last couple weeks he’s gotten a lot better. He’s still developing as an NFL player but you can see the talent’s there, it just has to click for him.

Number 3 is true to an extent, but the Bucs defense is also relatively good on a per-play basis so that doesn’t factor in as much.
The scheme is a bit up and down as blitzes have been largely ineffective, while also putting the secondary in man-to-man coverage. But when we don’t blitz the scheme has worked very well and has put people in position to make plays.The DBs are good as well, especially Aqib Talib, which certainly helps.
So really, it’s a combination of the three.

it also helps that we’ve faced a very weak schedule, of course.

He’s gotten on the field but he hasn’t done anything good (or bad) yet.

Opinions about Morris are split in the fanbase. But Raheem Morris was a stellar defensive backs coach (and did very well as a DC in college for a year) who got promoted quickly, probably in part because the owners didn’t want to lose him.

While you can doubt his schemes, you cannot doubt the job he’s done to get these players motivated, believing in themselves and fighting through every game. This is an extremely young football team that is winning games despite its youth, and hasn’t really missed a beat despite many injuries. That’s a credit to the head coaching job Raheem Morris has done.

If Quincy Black is out, though he’ll be splitting time with Hayward. They didn’t look like liabilities last game, but that’s about all I can say about them.

So ehm, hah.

no (more like a Bucs fans), no (I prefer ribs), yes (IPA).

If he even goes 30% on 3rd downs this week and plays like he did on 1st and 2nd downs last week, Tampa could have their hands full.

And that doesn’t help. But we’ve allowed a lot of 3rd& medium and 3rd&longs through the air too.

But it’s tough to say why/ Some of it may be that he’s moving to checkdowns quicker than usual, as he tends to wait for a play to develop perfectly during the rest of the game. Some of it may be playcalling. Some of it may be a tired defense or a different style of defense. Tough to say, but he looks very cool and collected during the two-minute offense. All of the comebacks were impressive and decisive, all of them happened while moving the ball downfield consistently.

People don’t get suspended for DUIs, or at least: they don’t get suspended for their first DUI. Subsequent DUIs can lead to suspensions. Remember the Braylon Edwards DUI earlier this year? That didn’t result in a suspension either, and that was a clear DUI – blew twice the legal limit.

Unless the urine test comes back positive for some sort of drug I expect this to be over, really.

There was no offsetting language in his contract for non-coaching jobs so he’s still getting his full coaching salary, and I think he has another 1 or 2 years left as well.

After the Raiders the team has been very up and down. The defense remained fairly constant throughout Gruden’s tenure except for the last weeks in ‘08, but Gruden never really ran the defense. There was never a stable offense under Gruden, and bad drafting and salary cap woes limited the talent at his disposal for most of his years in Tampa Bay. The QB position specifically was a mess, and as you guys know it’s really tough to win then.

What eventually did him in supposedly (the owners never reallys aid) was a refusal to build for the future and an insistence on going with short-term free agent solutions.

And they’re bottom of the league right now, with a payroll of about $80M. You can construct a narrative where that happened because they’re cheap, and a narrative where it happened because of circumstance (missing out on some highly priced free agents, salary cap problems, no draft picks worthy of a new contract, building for the future, lack of a CBA). The fact that they’re also responsible for the highly publicized Manchester United debt situation doesn’t plead for them.

I, personally, don’t think they’re trying to be the Pittsburgh Pirates, but there’s a part of the fanbase that resents the lack of spending.