Overall, it was one of the more entertaining games of the season. Unfortunately, the Bucs were on the losing end of a 26-24 must-win game.
Entering Sunday night’s contest against the Dallas Cowboys, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers controlled their destiny when it came to making the playoffs and holding on to their lead in the NFC South.
Overall, it was one of the more entertaining games of the season. Unfortunately, the Bucs were on the losing end of a 26-24 must-win game.
The Buccaneers are not a prime-time team
Prime-time games and the Buccaneers do not mix well. When the lights are the brightest, the Bucs are the dimmest. This season alone, 4-of-7 losses have come on a Thursday, Sunday, or Monday night game. Three of the four losses were one-score games, with two games going into overtime, but they featured the Buccaneers playing from behind and needing to come back to make the game closer. Following suit during Sunday night’s loss to the Cowboys, the Buccaneers were playing from behind and ultimately lost the game as they have on each prime-time game this season.
A true lack of identity
Typically, when you think of the top teams in the league, each one has an identity. The Buccaneers do not have an identity. They have stars on both sides of the ball but are not a team known for doing anything extraordinary. With the amount of talent on offense and defense, something should stand out, yet it doesn’t. Even more of a head-scratcher as they are a top 5 team in the league in both passing and rushing offense through 16 weeks of the regular season. This played out last night as a Cowboys team with nothing to play for, as they were eliminated from the playoffs before kickoff on Sunday night. It allowed a team that ranks near the bottom of the league in team defense and is a middle-of-the-pack team on offense to control the game completely.
Questionable clock management strikes again
Todd Bowles and clock management are as prevalent a pairing as the Buccaneers and prime-time games in that they do not mix well. Throughout the entire first half of the game, the Buccaneers could not stop the Cowboys on defense. Calling a timeout with 54 seconds remaining in the second quarter was questionable at best. The timeout would not have impacted Mayfield’s 11-yard strike to Jalen McMillan. Instead, it gave the Cowboys 48 seconds to move the ball down the field and get into scoring position with two timeouts remaining, and with the Buccaneers defense unable to slow down the Cowboys all night, they did just that.
Improper utilization of Irving and White
The box score will tell you that Bucky Irving led the team with 16 carries to Rachaad White’s three, but there is much more than meets the eye. For the final ten minutes of the game, Irving, the NFL’s leader in yards after contact per attempt, sat on the sidelines without a single touch while White finished the game for the Buccaneers offense. White is better in pass blocking than Irving is, but pass protection from the running back wasn’t the biggest issue for the team, as the Cowboys generated 22 pressures on the night. White led the team in receptions with seven and tied Evans for a team-high eight targets. To correctly use a dynamic backfield like the Buccaneers have, look towards a team like the Detroit Lions and how David Montogmery and Jahmyr Gibbs have been used this season.
Something is missing from the defense
Saying the defense needs leadership isn’t the right observation because it slights a veteran like Lavonte David and stars like Vita Vea and Antoine Winfield Jr., which isn’t an entirely fair assessment. However, it’s missing something at every level. This comes back to the lack of identity, which, if not player-related, has to fall back on coaching. This has been a theme for most of the season when the Bucs lose. The defense ranks 25th in yards allowed with 354.3 per game and 22nd in points per game allowed with 23.5. Their inability to routinely stop opposing offenses forces their offense to play mistake-free, which is a lot to ask for in a pass-heavy league. Football is a team game, and the best teams in the league typically find their offense and defense ranks not to have such a large gap.
As the season is winding down, the seat for the Buccaneers coaching staff should be scorching hot as they entered Week 16 in the playoffs and left Week 16 on the outside looking in. Simply put, there is too much talent on this Buccaneers team for the array of issues that rear their ugly heads more often than not.
