Tag: Bucs Analysis

Behind Enemy Lines with the San Francisco 49ers

We sat down with 49ers Wire to take a look at Tampa Bay’s next opponent on Sunday.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have tilted with the likes of the Detroit Lions and the Philadelphia Eagles this year, but they face one of their biggest challenges yet this Sunday.

The Bucs are set to go up against the indomitable San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara, California for Week 11, travelling across the country to play one of the NFC’s most vaunted foes. It didn’t go well for Tampa Bay last year, losing 35-7 in Levi’s Stadium in Brock Purdy’s first NFL start.

We sat down with 49ers Wire’s Kyle Madson to talk about San Francisco’s recent three-game losing streak, last year’s matchup and more.

Bucs Report Card: How we graded Tampa Bay’s win over the Titans in Week 10

The Bucs may have beat the Titans by 16 points, but there are still areas that need work alongside the improvements made on Sunday.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers finally shook off their four-game losing streak with a big win over the Tennessee Titans.

Tampa Bay generally controlled the game from start to finish and won by 16 points in a 20-6 victory over the Titans. There were some notable adjustments on the offense and the defensive side of the ball and good things overall managed to happen, but it wasn’t a perfect game from the Bucs despite the favorable result at the end of things.

We graded Tampa Bay’s offense, defense, special teams and coaching from Sunday, and you can check out how we scored things below.

Studs and Duds from Tampa Bay’s victory over the Tennessee Titans

Here’s who we thought showed out and showed little in Tampa Bay’s streak-snapping win.

It took a while, but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have their first win after the bye week.

The team bested the Tennessee Titans 20-6 on Sunday, winning its first game in four weeks and moving to 4-5 on the year. Miraculously, the Bucs are still just a half a game back from the NFC South and remain in contention for the division after the rough slide.

Offense and defense played decently well on Sunday, making for a well-rounded performance that took home the win. As with every game, some players dazzled and some fell flat — check out our studs and duds from the matchup below:

Former Bucs CB Ronde Barber criticizes Tampa Bay secondary

Barber talked the Texans game with Raiders QB Rich Gannon and said that the Bucs “look like the worst secondary in football.”

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers turned in a dreadful performance on defense against the Houston Texans on Sunday, and a team legend wasn’t happy with it.

Former Bucs cornerback and Hall of Famer Ronde Barber spoke with former Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon for the 33rd Team, and the two discussed Tampa Bay’s loss to the Texans on the defensive side of the ball. And while Barber didn’t explicitly say that head coach Todd Bowles hasn’t coached the team well overall, he did mention that they certainly looked like it on Sunday.

“When you break down all those touchdowns, you’re gonna look at a secondary that doesn’t look coached well,” Barber said. “…It’s things that I look at and say ‘okay, that’s simple,’ but on the field, it’s not translating for this team.”

Barber also criticized the team’s use of Cover 4 defense (also known as “quarters” coverage), pointing out that safety help for cornerback Carlton Davis was often nowhere to be found during Houston’s splash plays. While Bowles has been known for his staunch defensive units in the past, Barber was particularly critical of the team’s defensive backs, saying that they looked like one of the NFL’s worst units on Sunday.

“To me, this was an embarrassing watch,” Barber said. “When I go back and watch it on film on Monday or Tuesday whenever I can stomach this, it’s probably gonna hit even harder — they look like the worst secondary in football.”

The Bucs’ secondary will have a chance to get back in Barber’s good graces when they play at home against Will Levis and the Tennessee Titans in Week 10 at 1 p.m. EST.

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Ranking Tampa Bay’s remaining schedule from easiest to hardest

The Bucs only play three teams above .500 in their remaining slate.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers sit at 3-5 with no solution to their problems in sight, but there is still football left to play and teams left to beat.

That’s the idea, anyway. And while the Bucs haven’t played the greatest football in the last four weeks, their schedule remains favorable — Tampa Bay plays only three teams with a winning record of the eight it’s set to tilt with, so picking up wins against bad teams will be imperative if the Bucs want to stay in the NFC South race and make an attempt to get back on track for 2023.

Here is Bucs Wire’s ranking of Tampa Bay’s remaining opponents, from easiest to hardest:

Bucs Report Card: How we graded Tampa Bay’s loss to Houston in Week 9

Tampa Bay’s defense and coaching might have to retake the class.

We’ve called a few games this season Tampa Bay’s most disappointing loss. And while the Atlanta Falcons game in Week 7 was probably an overall worse performance than Week 9’s game against the Texans, the lows of this game were almost certainly much lower.

The team lost 39-37 to the Texans off a Houston drive led by C.J. Stroud that took less than a minute and gave up approximately a bajillion yards on defense. The offense played well, but the team was weighed down by a coaching performance and defensive ineptitude that the team hasn’t experienced all year and the game served as another example of a team that is actively getting worse as the weeks go by.

Here is how we graded Tampa Bay’s defeat at the hands of the Texans:

Bucs Report Card: How we graded Tampa Bay’s loss to Buffalo in Week 8

It went better than the Week 7 game against the Falcons, but there’s still a lot to clean up in Tampa Bay after Week 8.

It was another loss for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Thursday, but it wasn’t quite as bad as the game four days prior.

The team was bested by the Buffalo Bills 24-18 on Thursday Night Football, and while the score makes the game look much closer than it is, the Bucs still put in a better shift than they did against the Atlanta Falcons the Sunday prior. That doesn’t mean the game was perfect, though, and there remains many things to clean up on the team’s short bye before they head to Houston to play the Texans in Week 9.

Bucs Wire graded the performances of the offense, defense, special teams and coaching for Tampa Bay against the Bills and you can see how we thought the team did below:

Bucs Report Card: How we graded Tampa Bay’s loss to Atlanta in Week 7

Despite a three-point game that saw the defense technically hold the Falcons to 16 points, we believe this was Tampa Bay’s worst game of the season.

This was not only a rough one for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — this was one of their worst games of the year.

The Bucs lost a division game against the Atlanta Falcons 16-13 that saw them dethroned from atop the NFC South, and it was an ugly game all around. The offense was still anemic, the defense gave up big yardage on both sides of the ball and the coaching was filled with some baffling decisions that showcased a lack of evolution from this regime. The Bucs dropped to 3-3 on the season and need to improve in many areas to avoid a bigger slide

Here is how we graded Tampa Bay’s offense, defense, special teams and coaching:

Breaking down the next four games on the Bucs’ schedule

Here’s how we see Tampa Bay’s next four games on its schedule after the bye week shaping out:

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have hit the bye week, and they stand atop the NFC South with a winning record of 3-1. The first frame of the season went particularly well for the team, but now, it’s time to look ahead to the next one.

The Bucs have a tough slate after they come back from the bye, facing off against the 3-1 Detroit Lions and the 3-1 Buffalo Bills, among other teams. It’s a tough upcoming stretch, and if Tampa Bay wants to keep on an upward trajectory to win the division and make the playoffs, it will need to pull out some wins in its next four matchups.

Here’s how we predict those next four matchups will go:

Four positions of need for the Bucs after the 2023 NFL draft

What do you think is Tampa Bay’s biggest positon of need at the moment?

The NFL draft has concluded and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers picked up eight new players, but they didn’t fill every need they had on the roster.

There are still a few positions on the team that could use a starting player, and there are others still that are lacking in depth beyond the starting front. Here are four of those positions that the team still needs to address after its rookies from the draft process come in: