The Tampa Bay Buccaneers should have absolutely no qualms about bringing back receiver DeSean Jackson in 2018.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it many more times over the next few months – 2017 didn’t go the way we expected it to for the Buccaneers. There’s a lot of reasons for this but none of those included the play of free agent acquisition DeSean Jackson at receiver.
No, Jackson didn’t have the best of seasons. He finished with 50 receptions on 90 targets, 668 yards, and three touchdowns. He posted his second lowest receiving yard total in his career as well as the lowest yards per reception average of his career at 13.4.
So he was a bust signing, right? Wrong.
If you look at the totality of the season, Jackson was certainly a victim of poor play at quarterback. Jameis Winston struggled mightily after being injured early on and trying to play through it. Winston has never been the best deep ball passer and trying to connect with Jackson on deep passes with a bum throwing shoulder wasn’t exactly the smartest game plan we’ve ever seen.
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Jackson is an impact player when he gets the ball in his hands. It seemed as though the only way Dirk Koetter wanted to get him involved was on the deep pass that wasn’t connecting – thus why 40 of his targets fell incomplete.
Jackson wasn’t getting those bubble screen opportunities, Adam Humphries was. Jackson wasn’t getting the end around carries, Freddie Martino and Bobo Wilson were. Jackson wasn’t getting those quick slant passes that allow him to get the ball in space where he could use his speed to break off a long run.
Quite simply, the idea of having this new “toy” on offense that can stretch the field was so enamoring that Koetter forgot all the other ways to utilize someone with as unique of a skill set as Jackson.
Once Winston returned from injury, he started playing better than we’ve ever seen in his professional career. An off-season of evaluation and study will hopefully open the offensive coaching staff’s eyes as to how underutilized and misused Jackson was. Certainly Jackson can’t be happy with the season he had, but in a season where it seemed everything went wrong, you just have to chalk it up as one more thing to fix.
Jackson still has two years and $21-million dollars left on his contract. If the Buccaneers decide to move on from him and can’t trade him, he would account for $7.5-million in dead cap space, so there really is no sensible reason to release him. It makes more sense for the team to use him for at least one more season, trying to get him more involved, and if that still doesn’t work, the Bucs can release him after the 2018 season with no cap repercussions.
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I don’t know about you, but seeing an offense with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin on the outsides with Jackson in the slot seems to make a whole heck of a lot of sense for next season. This offense has unfinished business and failed to meet expectations in 2017. Let’s see them line up together again and make amends.