The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 2-1, and could easily have been 3-0 heading into Week 4, despite scoring just one offensive touchdown in each of their first three games.
Injuries have obviously played a huge part in their early struggles on that side of the ball, but poor execution and self-inflicted errors continue to make a difficult situation even more challenging.
“Well, I certainly expect us and hope we can score more points than we’ve been scoring,” quarterback Tom Brady said Thursday. “I think we’re all disappointed by the fact that we haven’t scored as many points as I think we’re all capable of scoring. We’re three games in [and] I think we realize we haven’t done so well that we’ve got to get corrected. Whoever’s in the game, we’ve got to go in there and do a better job of scoring points. Like I said, it comes down to a lot of different things – penalties, turnovers – and it’s making the right play, executing the play. If we do that, I believe we’ll score points. It hasn’t been at our highest level the first three weeks of the year and hopefully we can get there at some point, but we’re working hard to get there.”
Offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich knows the team has to improve on early downs to keep themselves out of challenging third-and-long situations.
“We’re just not good enough, really, on first and second down,” Leftwich said Thursday. “You look at last week – we’re starting off on third-and-12. It’s tough to execute on third-and-12 – especially when you’re a banged-up football team. You’re a banged-up football team and you’re putting yourself in all these third-and-long situations, which means you’re going to punt the ball most of the time. It’s hard to score and punt at the same time. That’s really been our issue, being better on first and second down and giving ourselves an opportunity to score points. What we’ve always done around here is [give] ourselves an opportunity to score at a high level. We’re just not doing that right now. I think that’s something that we will get corrected. I’m excited, but that’s what’s really going on right now.”
Wide receiver Mike Evans missed last week’s loss to the Green Bay Packers due to a one-game suspension, and though he knows his unit can perform better than they have so far this season, he’s quick to remind everyone that the sky isn’t falling just yet.
“We’re not panicking at all,” Evans said Thursday. “We don’t know what people are saying, but we know [that] three touchdowns in three games is not good enough. We can do that in one half or one quarter. It’s early in the season, we’re 2-1. What are we, first in the division right now? Tied for first or something like that? We’re in a good spot. We know we’ve just got to get healthy and we’ve got to do better – clean up the little things, be better, [clean up] the penalties and the execution. We’ll be fine.”
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