Buccaneers: Jameis Winston will find you either in the slot or outside

Looking at the numbers, Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston distributes his passes equally inside and out.

Jameis Winston is a growing franchise quarterback that the Buccaneers are lucky to have. Despite the critics he has represented the team well in the community. On the field he has become the confident leader the Bucs need to take that next step. He still makes decisions that we would rather he didn’t, but any guy that can make a play like this is a guy we want around:

Now, to analyze Winston more, we take a look at where he likes to go with the football. Yes, we know Mike Evans was his favorite target since Evans led the league in targets with 173. But what else does he prefer? Quarterbacks always have a favorite something, or someone. Some even prefer a particular field location.

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And that leads me into the numbers we are going to look at today. Recently, Football Outsiders analyst Scott Kacsmar did a study on slot receivers and quarterbacks. For this segment we are focusing on the QB portion of the study.

For the quarterbacks, Kacsmar looked at the number of passes in the slot versus passes to the outside. Winston was very even with his pass distribution, with 261 passes in the slot versus 193 on the outside.

It’s an interesting stat because Winston’s overall favorite target was an outside one, Mike Evans. His next two favorites, however, were slot players Cameron Brate and Adam Humphries.

This was actually par for the course for most of the league’s quarterbacks. Only six quarterbacks through more passes out wide than in the slot, and one threw the same number (Matt Barkley). Winston’s wide to slot ratio last season was .74 ranking him 20th in the league, a hair below average.

Winston’s number here will be interesting to follow in 2017. The team has added DeSean Jackson and O.J. Howard. Howard will get a lot of targets in the slot along with Cameron Brate. Jackson will almost certainly spend time in the slot as well. Will he alternate with Humphries? Time will tell. Winston’s numbers in the slot certainly have every chance in the world to increase.

Next: 3 Bold predictions for the 2017 season

However it turns out, we know that Winston is always improving. To see that he already distributes the ball almost equally is exciting to see.