Jake Camarda let the Buccaneers down in Week 5 without even playing a snap

For the second straight week, punter Jake Camarda was a healthy inactive for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which raises all sorts of questions we never thought would need to be answered.

It's also a move that ended up coming back to unexpectedly bite the team in Thursday's loss to the Atlanta Falcons.

Camarda has been one of the Bucs best players, and had plenty of moments last year where he helped keep the team in games they otherwise might have let slip away. His ability to flip the field is tremendously valuable, which is why it's so striking that he's been unable to do that so far this year.

The pressure for him to figure things out has been building since the preseason and seemingly culminated in his benching in Week 4, which didn't really have much of an impact since the Bucs were able to so easily beat the Eagles. That wasn't the case on Thursday when Tampa Bay needed the old version of Camarda and was stung by his notable absence.

Jake Camarda's struggles hurt the Bucs even if he wasn't active in Week 5

We all know what happened after Lavonte David intercepted Kirk Cousins with under two minutes left, giving the Bucs the ball in Falcons territory. A missed facemask penalty on Bucky Irving failed to offset a holding penalty on Graham Barton. Tampa Bay didn't get the ball into field goal range and needed to punt, which is where Camarda's struggles truly hurt the team.

Backed out of field goal range, Trenton Gill came on to punt and booted the ball into the endzone. Atlanta got the ball at the 20 and marched down to kick a game-tying field goal as time expired in regulation. If this were last year, and that version of Camarda was playing, there's a decent chance his pins the Falcons deep in their own territory and makes the march to tie the game even harder.

Perhaps Atlanta still would have been able to drive the length of the field and tie -- or even win -- the game. Given how close the game was to being over before Cousins could spike the ball and set up a game-tying field goal, though, the touchback on the punt becomes a critical factor.

It was a short week, so it's unclear how much of that factored into Camarda getting benched again, but it's not great that he's been shut down for two games in a row. Perhaps the 10-day break will give him time to get right, but it's a concerning situation brewing at a usually reliable area of the roster.

Camarda wasn't on the field making a mistake, but he still hurt his team by not being on his game and rendering himself a nonfactor in a huge moment.

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