6 Buccaneers who deserve blame after brutal 39-37 loss to Texans

Carlton Davis III

There's no nice way to put it: Carlton Davis had one of his worst days in a Buccaneers uniform on Sunday.

On at least three different occasions Davis was absolutely cooked and each time seemed to be somehow worse than the last mistake he made. He gave up a touchdown to Dalton Schultz which gave Houston a late lead, and then got torched on a 31-yard catch by Noah Brown that set up another go-ahead score by the Texans.

Making matters worse, and even more embarrassing, was that Davis got flagged for a hold on that play he gave up to Brown. So somehow Davis held his man and still got burned for a gain of over 30 yards.

Nothing was as bad as the last play of the game that Davis made. He was in coverage on Tank Dell when C.J. Stroud hit him for a game-winning touchdown that capped off a 75-yard drive with under a minute left in the game.

Almost every time you looked, Davis was on the wrong side of some sort of big play for C.J. Stroud and the Texans offense. If Stroud ends up winning Rookie of the Year, he should donate a portion of his trophy to Davis.

It was a horrible day for Davis, and his bad game heavily contributed to an overall rough afternoon for an otherwise reliable Buccaneers defense. That's going to happen when one of your best players has the sort of performance Davis had, as he was almost unplayable at times in coverage.

Losing Jamel Dean in the first quarter didn't help Davis or the Bucs offense. Dean left the game after surrendering a touchdown catch by Nico Collins and was ruled out with a concussion shortly thereafter. It was clear the Bucs were sorely missing their top corner but it's not like the game got off to a great start in the secondary to begin with.

Things were trending down from the very beginning and the day Davis had personified the worst performance of the year by the Tampa Bay defense.