The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Buccaneers vs Cowboys
I must say for a little while yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised with the play on the field. It almost appeared for a quarter or so, that we would have a chance at winning the game. Too many mental errors, and some poor play from a couple different units and you end up with a 34-21 final.
The Good – The Running Game, especially Cadillac Williams
The team as a whole ran for 174 yards so it was an impressive day by both backs, Derrick Ward and Cadillac Williams. It was really Caddy though that got the crowd fired up and showed some of what made him so electric as a rookie. He finished with 13 carries for 97 yards for a 7.4 ypc and 1 TD. He showed no apprehension making cuts, at least from my seats 25 rows from the field. Derrick Ward finished with 12 carries for 62 yards for a 5.2 ypc and 1 TD.
The Good – The Offensive Line
The line helped the running game to the aforementioned 174 yards on the ground, and allowed 0 sacks. For a unit that underwent a transition to an entirely new style of blocking (zone blocking) scheme this offseason, this is stellar. Every Bucs fan knew that the line could be the number one unit on the entire roster and it showed that yesterday.
The Bad – The “The Sailsmen”
I am truly perplexed by one thing that has developed over the past 9 months since Jon Gruden has been fired. When Gruden was here, it didn’t matter whether we did something succesful or not, it was bashed by the media. Since Gruden is gone, everything is sugar coated and attempted to be served to me in a cup that has something very reminiscent to Kool Aid in it. I get that Byron Leftwich has a nice arm. He makes some very nice throws occasionally. He also shows a tendency to look down the field more, which after years of Gruden gets people all warm and fuzzy inside. Stop trying to sell this guy as our savior though. He made numerous horrible passes that were lucky to be not picked off on Sunday. One pass would have positively been picked off had Maurice Stovall not made a miraculous attempted catch, stopping in his tracks and jumping backwards. Michael Clayton made one almost exactly the same as Stovall. Leftwich has an obvious tendency to overthrow passes, and he will now be reffered to on this site as “The Sailsmen.”
The Bad – The Coaching
These are all plays that I consider coaching errors, or errors that are related to mental lapses, which are the coaches jobs’ to fix.
- Running into the kicker on 4th and 2. First down.
- Offsides on a punt.
- Having Sabby Piscatelli line up as a FS. Touchdown.
- Blocked Field Goals.
- Trying for the end zone with 7 seconds left and 30 something yards to get there.
- The move away from the running game in the 3rd quarter half. 15 first half runs, 11 in the 2nd half (by Caddy and DWard).
The Ugly – The Secondary other than Aqib Talib
Before I start talking about a unit that was horrid on Sunday, let me talk about one player on this unit that was quite impressive, Aqib Talib. The couple catches that Roy Williams caught at the start of the game resulted in 0 yac. He had at least 3 passes defended from what I could see, two of them were quite special. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, this is a ProBowl caliber player.
Sabby Piscatelli on the other hand was real bad. I hate piling on the guy because I think that he has a bright future ahead of him for this team, but yesterday was not one of those days. He bites too much on play action passes and has a tendency to stand flat footed on deep routes and get beat. He does show nice angles on running backs that break through to the secondary, and that contributed to his 8 tackles. He was horrid in pass coverage today, and I’ll leave it at that. Ronde Barber, Sabby Piscatelli and Jermaine Phillips were all to blame on the zone coverage touchdown by Roy Williams. One of my favorite young Bucs Elbert Mack missed a tackle and Jermaine Phillips followed that up on the touchdown by Miles Austin. Ronde Barber had a couple nice pass breakups and a great sack, but still showed some shakiness in what is going to be a predominantly man coverage scheme.
The Ugly – The Pressure
I don’t have much to write here, because I didn’t have high hopes for the pass rushing unit, but it was non existent on Sunday. There was one play with the ‘Boys backed up to the end zone where Tony Romo had about 9 seconds to make a pass. 0 sacks from the Dline. If we continue to have no pressure and lapses in the deep secondary, we might as well get used to big plays destroying our team, just like they did yesterday.