Buccaneers: Grading the Bucs’ 2017 Week 8 loss to Carolina
With the struggles of Winston this past week, an emergence of the running game may have been what the offense needed to get some points on the board.
As usual, Doug Martin was the feature runner on Sunday. He had 71 total rushing yards on eighteen carries. Martin had several explosive runs against Carolina. One was for fourteen yards and another for seventeen yards.
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The biggest problem in the running game, in my opinion, is not having clear running lanes open long enough for Martin to find them.
Several times on Sunday Martin was very patient waiting for a lane to open, but on several occassions, those lanes never opened. The one part of Martin’s game that sets him aside from your average Joe running the ball is his ability to make the first and second defender miss.
With that being said, even making the first few guys miss can only allow the runner to make it back to the line of scrimmage when there’s no lane to run.
In the case for Martin, the Bucs need to give him more carries and take some of the burden ioff of the quarterback. I’d like to see the Buccaneers give Martin somewhere in the ball park of 25 carries a game to help keep the oppossing defense honest against the play action.
Peyton Barber made the stat sheet but not in the way he wanted to. Barber was called for a holding call after Evans completed a nineteen yard reception to the Carolina 31. This could’ve set the Bucs up for at least a field goal.