“Impressive How Much Worse They’ve Become”
November 26th, 2011
Joe doesn’t think stats are for losers, but Joe’s hardly a stats guy at all. Joe’s fantasy team consists of scantily clad women, not a list of uniformed men in shoulder pads.
Sometimes, however, the game-charting number crunchers on the Interwebs churn out telling and intriguing data, even if it is a bit subjective. Many months ago, Joe brought word from the stats geeks at FootballOutsiders.com when they rolled out numbers claiming E.J. Biggers was a top-10 cornerback.
This week, the stats geeks at ProFootballFocus.com exposed the Bucs defense for being the worst tackling team in the NFL. And it’s the Bucs veterans stinking up the field.
Terrible Tackling in Tampa
If I’m honest, the inspiration for this research just so happened to be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After watching them miss 42 tackles in three games, I was astounded and started digging to find out just how much worse they are than everyone else. Well, as it turns out, they’re quite a lot worse. Their 15.54% of attempted tackles missed almost makes even the atrocious Eagles look competent. Almost. It’s nothing new for the Bucs as they had the sixth-highest percentage last year, but it’s almost impressive how much worse they’ve become. Players deserving special mentions (percentage of tackles missed in parenthesis) include Quincy Black (25.5%), Ronde Barber (22.7%) and Tanard Jackson (a staggering 44%) who have all played significant parts.
You can click through the link above to get more insight into the ugly numbers. Sad tackling is nothing new to Bucs fans, but seeing how it stacks up to the rest of the league — and seeing Ronde Barber’s name — is a bit enlightening.
November 26th, 2011 at 10:35 am
I have seen the poor tackling too. I swear, sometimes it looks as though some Tampa players are outright scared to tackle.
I will never forget a recent game where Carolina ran all over us. You could clearly see, several of our players did not want any part of the big Carolina running backs.
November 26th, 2011 at 10:36 am
If it were only for tackling I would excuse Ronde. Sadly, he has been extremely weak in coverage this year as well. Jackson has been simply bad since he has been back but I’m not sure Lynch or Jones are playing any better. Well, they are tackling better.
Gotta tighten up your defense, Raheem.
November 26th, 2011 at 10:39 am
Are we REALLY that bad? Or does our dc/head coach not know how to stress fundamentals?
November 26th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Just another reason why Rah needs to go.
November 26th, 2011 at 11:25 am
I’m a little surprise at Ronde being up there. I’ve seen him make some big hits this year. Just last game he made that goal line, touchdown saving stop.
November 26th, 2011 at 11:25 am
OH NO, WE SUCK AGAIN!
November 26th, 2011 at 11:42 am
The only reason Ronde is on the list is because he actually tries, is constantly pursuing plays, and has probably lost a step. I’m more surprised to see Black on the list. I didn’t realize he was near the ball that often.
November 26th, 2011 at 11:57 am
“We wanted to get to be the biggest and most powerful Buccaneers team you’ve ever seen”
Rock Star explaining his drafting strategy.
the “get to be” aint been gotten yet.
November 26th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Rah just lobbied hard for handing 2 of those guys a big raise. Now PFF stats are subjective and questionable but if true: it exposes that rah and dom dont even know who is playing poorly, this is a common trait among bad football coaches (your eye tells you that black and jackson are playing well but when you specifically chart it – it becomes statistically clear that those players are hurting your team in key areas.
This is even more telling bc rah says stats are for losers, indicating that he is aware of what the stats indicate, he just doesnt believe it.
This “eyeball method” used to be the way we evaluated baseball players until sabermetrics and the A’s and Rays proved that stats used properly are for winners – rah is just too clueless get it.
That is why his defense may set a NFL record in futility based on the key yards allowed per play stat. Jim Bates is laughing his behind off.
November 26th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
The Great Ronde Barber is getting old. Sucks, but it gets us all. Apparently, laying on the ground, under a fullback, and having the RB step on your hand counts as a missed Tackle. Otherwise, their stats are way off, as Black hasn’t been near the ball that many times.Tanard is rusty, but never was a good tackler. He hits, but doesn’t wrap up.
If you give a player huge contract, for horrible play and total lack of effort, it demoralizes the whole team. Dom makes a habit of this. Clayton couldn’t play, because he couldn’t catch. He did give effort.
Thanks Dom, for that fat Black contract!! Showed our young guys- just walk around the field with yer thumb up yer arse, and avoid ballcarriers, and yer shall be richly rewarded!!
Did he ever watch Quincy play?? He’s ALWAYS been horrible! What could he possible have thought? Even Quincy’s agent couldn’t find enough plays to make a highlight film for the negotiations!! We have third stringers who can put enough tape together to like like an All-pro!!!
But not our boy Quincy. Just sad
November 26th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Rah just lobbied hard for handing 2 of those guys a big raise.
How do you know this Thomas? Were you part of the contract talks for Quincy Black? You don’t know if Dom just told Rah he was resigning him because he is the GM!! Just like Dom told Rah he was letting Rudd go. Its documented Rah wanted to keep Barret. THe point is you don’t know who wanted who. All you know are the players on the field period.
And for some of you………Why even put much stock in this dumb stat geek article. It tells you by the name of the website “Geek.”
Football is a man’s sport and geeks wouldn’t understand it. Just like I laughed when Joe put the article of Biggers on here before. Biggers sucks right now and he sucked last year. But the “Geeks” found a way to fugde numbers to show Biggers was good. It had many of you wanting to believe the hogwash that the bucs didn’t need to add free agents like Joseph etc. Look at it now. Picking on Barber. Barber by far has been consistently at least the #2 best defensive player on our team. Barber still plays good football at 36. I don’t need a “geek” to tell me that.
November 26th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
@Capt. Tim
“Did he ever watch Quincy play?? He’s ALWAYS been horrible!”
Damn right he has Captain! Keeping #55 around for two more years would’ve been a better option than starting Black OR Hayes.
November 26th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Oh, and for those of you who want Rah fired………..get off it. I told you before the season started that if the bucs didn’t win, don’t blame Rah. Management decided not to help him in free agency. Veterans would have helped this team tremendously. Its not Rah’s fault for these inconsistencies. Its called youth by the players with no one like Hardy Nickerson to hold the young players accountable by not only being a good player, but an enforcer in the locker room. Believe me. That presence helped sapp, lynch, brooks, ronde etc to develop to the players they were to be. Ask every last one of them. Nickerson didn’t play that nonsence.
November 26th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Almost the entire LB, CB and S position groups must be overhauled this offseason or the Bucs will continue to have one of the worst defenses again next year. The d-line is promising and doesn’t need a lot of attention, but the second and third levels of this defense are atrocious.
Except for Foster, Watson, Talib, TJax and Gaitor I don’t see any compelling reason to keep any of the rest of those guys except for camp competition purposes. The Bucs MUST draft a LB and a CB highly in the upcoming draft, as well as signing another LB, CB and S in free agency. Anything short of that and we can look forward to another soft, vulnerable defense in 2012.
And the cherry on top to tie it all together is a glaring need for a defensive coordinator. Dominik must do whatever it takes to sign the absolute best candidate he can find. Period. Raheem can still have input as to the overall defensive philosophy, but the new DC needs to have enough autonomy to implement the details his own way.
November 26th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Patrick- yup, Derrick Brooks at 40 would be a huge upgrade.
Hell, I think Mike Singletary at 52 is a huge upgrade.
Either one of those two would be the worst LB I’ve ever seen. Together- they crush any hope a defense has of stopping the run, as they refuse to play run defense.
As” “WalterFootball” put it-” any OLB ranked fourth round talent or better, would be an immediate upgrade!”
Ouch! Pretty bad when a rookie Fourth rounder can step in and be an immediate upgrade. What’s even worse, is that’s entirely ture
November 26th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
They should bring Marinelli or Herm back to coach the D.
November 26th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
7 game tryout for a $7,000,000 year sounds inspiring enough.
Hopefully he realizes his past……..
November 26th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
the above should have been on the Albert Haynesworthitornot thread..
November 26th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Patrick, Marinelli would be perfect, but fat chance we could pry him away from Chicago. WE need senior coordinators with so many rookies. When Kansas City falls apart, we should try to get Romeo Crennel and get Charlie Weis away from the Gators for OC (belongs on a pro team) and build a team reminiscient of the Patriot glory years!
November 26th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
And yet, people want to blame the man standing on the side line. Brilliant.
November 26th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
You guys want to talk about a new D coordinator on every single thread on here, which is fine (I wouldn’t complain about getting the D play calling off Raheems plate) but you’d better understand that we could get Rex Ryan in here to call plays and he STILL wouldn’t get production out of this piss poor linebacking crew and the zero effort shown routinely out of Sean Jones. Until we scrap Geno, Black and get Cody Grimm to play strong safety next year, our defense is doomed.
I think we miss Cody Grimm more than anybody wants to admit.
November 26th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Guys:
You must remember Raheem has but one more year on his contract. Few if any NFL coaches are going to uproote their families for one year. Only (likely) defensive coordinator you may get is a guy in college looking for work and/or wanting to put the NFL on his resume.
November 26th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Good point Joe.
IMO if the team finishes 6-10 or worse the likely scapegoat will be Olson. big mistake IMO i think with a couple more weapons he could develop a playoff calibar offense. Really good job with Freeman also, who doesn’t need to backtrack by learning a new system.
Now the train wreck that is rah’s defense, do not believe he is capable of fixing it.
November 26th, 2011 at 11:46 pm
The absence of Ruud is obviously evident.
November 27th, 2011 at 12:27 am
I respect Quincy Black for what he has had to endure in life, however his play is absolute garbage. He misses more tackles than he makes and has ZERO if not a negative impact on the field. Ronde is still a better than average corner back especially given his size and age. Gotta give it up to Biggers for how hard he plays but he just seems to be physically out-matched more often than not. I would guess that Tanard’s injury is bothering him more than it would normally, given the fact that he was away from the game/contact for so long. Talib and Jones cant be far behind in the blame game either.
Stats are for losers… Bucs are 4-6…
November 27th, 2011 at 7:21 am
For those that bash posters for blaming the guy on the sidelines, Who else is to blame? He dumped veteran players and put the guys in that he wanted. And the guy on the sidelines is the D-Coordinator by his own choice, yet his side of the ball has sucked since his 2 week promotion from Asst. d-back coach to D-coordinator, to HC. This team needs an experienced HC to come in here and train these kids. A Rookie HC with no experience is not capable of developing & training these kids because the Rookie doesn’t know how to train them. A Billion Dollar business is not the place to have a “learning on the job” CEO.
November 28th, 2011 at 8:24 pm
To Tampa2…………..Again I ask, how do you know it was not Dominick who dumped the veteran players? No, you don’t like morris so conveniently you blame him. Again, we don’t know what happen behind closed doors. Coming on this board writing opinions and presenting them as fact is ridiculous.