Buccaneers: One area Jameis Winston improved immensely

Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB Jameis Winston certainly had some faults during the 2019 season, but he improved immensely in one area.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have an extremely important decision to make when looking at the future of QB Jameis Winston.

The Buccaneers QB is slated to become an unrestricted free-agent and is reportedly wanting a contract of $30 million per year.

At this point, though, it would seem more likely that Tampa Bay uses the franchise tag on Winston if the organization chooses to bring him back, which would give him another year with the franchise at around $26 million per year.

Some in the Buccaneers fanbase want to move on from Winston, saying that his high interception rate is holding the team back from making a run to the playoffs. Others see the high upside and potential of Winston and want to give him another year.

While there are many criticisms of Winston’s game, there is one area where he improved immensely in 2019: The deep ball.

In his first season in Bruce Arians’ system, Winston led the league in passing yards and touchdown passes- much of that due to his improvement on deep passes. His aggressive percentage was 66.8 percent and average intended air yards was 10.5, which is among the top in the NFL. Though he was throwing more deep passes than the vast majority of quarterbacks in the league, Winston still maintained a completion percentage above 60 percent (60.7 percent), which was right at his expected completion rate (60.8 percent).

Though Winston faced criticism in his first few seasons about being inaccurate on deep balls too often, his deep pass was noticeably better this year, and that plays out through the eye test and through statistics.

It’s understandable for Buccaneers fans to have doubts about Winston and it wouldn’t be fair to talk about the success of the deep ball and his high passing yardage/touchdowns without mentioning those interceptions.

It will be interesting to see how Tampa Bay handles the QB situation moving forward and if the organization believes that Winston can clean up the turnover issues, while looking at his promising development in other areas.