A putrid display of offensive prowess: Indecisiveness, poor decisions and a lethargic affair that masquerade, as a professional football team on the field at Raymond James Stadium, this past Sunday!
The anointed one, QB Josh McCown looked thoroughly confused, out of sync and compounded his inexplicit play with inexcusable mental lapses for a veteran quarterback brought in to manage a game, limit turnovers and be an efficient passer.
McCown ran the gambit from holding on to the football too long, to missing wide open receivers, because he was hesitant to let the pigskin fly, to the old mantra “living for another play”. McCown took unnecessary risk an repeatedly looked more like a rookie than the veteran his is.
To compound matters other than the fullback dive play, that saw FB Jorvorskie Lane rumble and stumble his way to a 54-yard gain, there was very little running room and the team did little in the way to get the offense in rhythm early in the game.
The defense was not much better! Allowing Derek Anderson, a quarterback who hasn’t thrown a regular season pass since 2012, to get too comfortable in the pocket carving up the defense for 230 yards while completing 70% of his passes.
The front four of the Bucs got very little pressure and the defensive game plan did little in the way of rattling Anderson. While the blitz is a tool in the arsenal of the defense, it was rarely used – now granted it’s not a staple in a Tampa 2 defense – but if you are going to show the Double A-Gap blitz with MLB Mason Foster, who is not the fleetest of foot and expect him to be able to close the gap post snap with the Panthers most dangerous receiving threat TE Greg Olson that is the embodiment of piss poor game planning.
Oh what could have been!
A catapulting surge to victory and a sure game changing momentum swing. As one of the few errant passes by Anderson was off target and was ripe for the pickings, but ricocheted of the hands of S Dashon Goldson, at the 1:52 mark in the 4th quarter – however, even after the pass fell incomplete off the mitts of Goldson, it still forced the Panthers to punt.
Now granted the game was still within reach with just 1:36 remaining and the Bucs on their own 32 yard line – with two timeouts, the offense imploded. First there was a false start penalty on G Garret Gilkey, who was in the game do to the injury sustained by newly acquired savior G Logan Mankins, then the unthinkable happened McCown dropped back found a crosser in RB Bobby Rainey who had the ball and the game knocked cleanly out of his grasp.
The final offensive play was a microcosm of the entire game for a team that was out of sync, lethargic and lacked any type of swagger…
