Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Week Two: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
After another spectacular offensive performance in a Week two victory against the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles, what was the Good, … the Bad, and dare I say … the Ugly for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers came into Week two 1-0 after an improbable win against the reigning NFC South Champions, the New Orleans Saints. The offense exploded for 529 total yards and six touchdowns in the 48-40 win.
The Buccaneers continued their offensive explosion in Week two starting with a 75-yard touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson on the first play in route to a 27-21 victory in which the offense totaled 436 yards and four touchdowns.
Now the Eagles are not the same team that they were in the Super Bowl as some players moved on in free agency and others are injured, but still, they are the defending Super Bowl Champions.
Going on to a 2 – 0 start for the first time since 2010. Let’s take a look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly from Tampa Bay’s Week two win.
The Good
The Buccaneers Passing Offense
While filling in for the suspended Jameis Winston, Ryan Fitzpatrick has been playing his best football since his 2015 season with the Jets when he earned his “Fitzmagic” nickname.
After his Week one performance against the Saints, many thought that maybe it was just a fluke and that he could not possibly do it again. The season opener wasn’t an aberration as he completed an astonishing 82 percent (27/33) of his passes for 402 yards and four touchdowns.
His four primary targets in the passing game (Mike Evans, DeSean Jackson, Chris Godwin and O.J. Howard) caught 85 percent of their targets for 304 yards (90 percent of the total passing yards). The group also caught all of his four touchdowns.
A slight drop from the game against the Saints (94 percent of targets for 93 percent of yards) but still equally amazing. Now he did throw one interception last game, but it really was not his fault as Howard couldn’t get the handle on the pass, a fluke event.
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If Fitzpatrick can duplicate this passing performance on Monday night against the Steelers, I think, even though Winston’s suspension will be over after the game, that they will continue to ride the hot hand of Fitzpatrick until he has a bad outing.
Even though the Buccaneers won the game moving their record to 2 – 0 and looked very good doing it, with every good there is still a bad in there somewhere, so let’s move onto the negative side of things.