Buccaneers: Secondary graded unexpectedly high by Pro Football Focus
The Buccaneers received some love from Pro Football Focus when it came to the secondary.
The Buccaneers made it their business to improve the pass defense prior to the 2016 season. Brent Grimes was signed as a free agent. Vernon Hargreaves was selected in the draft. The idea was to give Mike Smith a talented group stopping the passing game to go along with a solid and growing front seven.
As we all saw, the defense took time to come together. It flashed, but the pass defense was behind the run defense. The Bucs finished 22nd in the league against the pass, averaging 250.8 yards allowed through the air per game. Hargreaves struggled, although he may just be primed for a huge second season. Last year, however, it still wasn’t what Dirk Koetter and company wanted.
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Most everyone is familiar with the work of Pro Football Focus. They recently posted an article that ranked each team by their secondary. Now, the folks at PFF haven’t been giving universal love to the Bucs recently. I mean, come on, they ranked the Bucs defensive front seven 22nd in the sport. This is a group with Gerald McCoy, Noah Spence and Kwon Alexander.
They were nearly in the bottom quarter of the league, and they were pretty good. How are the defensive backs going to rank?
Well, to my surprise, the Bucs secondary was ranked 15th. Here is what they had to say:
"At age 33, Brent Grimes finished 2016 with the highest overall grade of his career at 90.2, which was fourth highest among all cornerbacks. As a rookie starting opposite Grimes, Vernon Hargreaves III saw more passes thrown into his coverage than any defender in the league while giving up over 200 more yards than the next player. The safety position could be a strength as new addition J.J. Wilcox finished last season with the 14th highest coverage grade (84.2), while Keith Tandy was the highest-graded safety over the final five weeks of the season, allowing a passer rating of just 34.3 into his coverage over that span."
Nobody is going to object to praise, of course. However, doesn’t this seem like high praise for a group that didn’t finish very high in the league standings? To me, this ranking is more based on potential than past results. I agree that Hargreaves is primed to have a big year, but frankly, he didn’t as a rookie. We will see when the safeties hit it between the white lines, whether or not they are a step up. There are question marks back there.
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It is nice to get that kind of love, isn’t it? Hopefully the secondary will perform to these lofty expectations, and maybe even out-perform them.