Short Passes Are Working
September 18th, 2014
Many Bucs fans jumped with glee when the Bucs drafted wide receiver Mike Evans with the seventh overall pick. All of a sudden, Bucs fans had visions of big-play bombs dancing in their heads.
Well, Woody Cummings of the Tampa Tribune has a rude awakening for these same fans. It seems when the Bucs try to go downfield, bad things happen. But good things are happening when the Bucs throw short, Cummings types.
Through two games QB Josh McCown has thrown downfield 11 yards or more only seven times, which might seem like a waste of the Bucs’ supposed big-play wideouts. Fact is, the offense is designed to quickly get the ball in the hands of its playmakers, and the Bucs do that mostly with short passes off one- and three-step drops by the quarterback. McCown has completed 19 of 28 such passes for 123 yards. Those aren’t great numbers, and when you add the two interceptions he has thrown in those situations, they’re even worse. But the short passing attack has allowed Tampa Bay to move and control the ball, which is their primary objective. So, there’s no reason to change now.
Joe sees where Cummings is coming from and yes, of course, stick with what is working. Here’s the problem, though. If the Bucs can only get the offense moving with short passes, take a wild guess what defenses are going to do?
You guessed it: Defenses are going to start bunching up and dare the Bucs to throw long, since they can’t. By giving up on the long- or medium-range passing game, aren’t you neutering your offense?
September 18th, 2014 at 9:03 am
Tampa Bay Dink & Dunkaneers baby!
September 18th, 2014 at 9:07 am
Instead of binary thinking of either or, they could blend deep passes into short passing scheme lol
No! They MUST do one or other!! Lol
September 18th, 2014 at 9:08 am
We don’t have a QB on the roster that can throw deep consistently. The short passing game was working well, until we abandoned it for no reason at all.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:11 am
yeah, those short passes to the opponent for an int inside the 10 yard line are working great guys.
keep up the good work!
September 18th, 2014 at 9:11 am
It’s been two games. TWO! Lol
AND our coordinator is out.
Let’s see what these guys can do in the long run.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:14 am
McCown outdinks and outdunks the backup QB on the bench. He is the dinky dunker.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:16 am
“So, there’s no reason to change now.” WHAT?
We’re 0-2 and haven’t scored more than 20 points in either of the losses. How is that good in today’s “pass happy” NFL. Weird, I thought winning games was the primary objective, not ball control.
Almost every time Jackson get’s a ball thrown 10 feet in the air he goes up and catches it over whatever smaller CB is covering him. And by every time, I mean the one time a game he gets a chance to make a play.
Our defense is not good enough for our conservative offense. We’ll continue to lose close games if we don’t take more chances and put up more points. Seven throws down field is a pretty terrible sample size to draw any conclusions from.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:19 am
Marcus Arroyo is the offensive coordinator right now, so maybe this is Tedford’s big scheme, or maybe this is the ugly spawn of what you get when you take a guy without significant experience and throw him into the fire. I’m guessing Tedford might have done some things a little differently so if/when he gets back (and I wonder if the guy is really going to be back), I’ll probably wipe the slate clean and reset my expectations for production.
But so far we’re averaging fewer points per game than we did under Sullivan. That’s not sitting well with all of us.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:30 am
Our playmakers biggestr ability is to go up and get the ball. So yeah, lets throw them short passes designed to pick up YAC. Maybe if we have Percy Harvin or Corderelle Patterson short passes make sense. We have 6’5 receivers who can outjump defneders. Throw the goddamn ball down the field.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:34 am
I’m guessing all the offensive coaches will be gone soon and it will be a revolving door of OC’s. This is par for the course of both Lovie and our Buc’s.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:42 am
What is working? Our passing game is pathetic. McCown is his predictable mediocre self. Such delusion.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:43 am
McClown is blind to receivers past 10 yards. When all that’s left to him is receivers past that, he freezes with indecision, resulting in a sack or worse. This guy truly is what everyone thought he was prior to last season’s outlier; a somewhat serviceable backup. To suggest otherwise… well knowing Lovie, talk to me around Christmas, assuming he doesn’t get hurt.
To those saying “We’ve only seen two games! Give ’em time!”… Keep watching. Unless something drastically changes, this shit’s about to get real ugly, real quick.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:45 am
I’d love to see a deep game. Let me know when we draft a QB that can actually throw deep.
September 18th, 2014 at 9:49 am
Interesting spin, one man’s successful short passing game is another man’s check down passes. As of right now I believe the Bucs have the 31st ranked passing offense and are 0-2, so by all means keep up the good work guys. The irony is people would be ripping Schiano and Sullivan a new one for almost the same production, yet somehow with the new staff the short passing game “is working”…0-2, 31st ranked passing game????
September 18th, 2014 at 10:10 am
Few in the NFL win by scoring less than 20 points. The teams that do win have solid pass rushers and play good D. The Bucs do not have either. In order to win the Bucs need to score more than 20. If the Bucs contine to dink-n-dunk then it gives way to many opportunities for McCown to “try to do too much”. We see were that gets us.
As a Bucs fan I believe the D will get better the second half of the season but until then the approach should be lets out score the other team. Please see Chicago for this example. Our team is similarly built so I think they should be considered a solid reference point. Air it out and live with the good and hope the good out weights the bad.
September 18th, 2014 at 10:11 am
Gotta love hearing about that 13-1 TD/INT ratio. Throwing to these big, tall receivers. Also How complicated this Offense was to learn. My biggest disappointment is D.Martin thou. I know injuries been getting these guys. I would really hope to see him do good tonight, but if not I’m guessing B.Rainey will break one on them again.
September 18th, 2014 at 10:19 am
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Throw the damn ball down the field! These stats are for losers. We are wasting the talents of Jackson and Evans will this bullsmack we are running now. In particular I’ve seen numerous occasions when Jackson is running wide arse open down the field, and McCown chooses a 3 yard check down instead.
September 18th, 2014 at 10:20 am
So this was Tedford’s secret offense about? What good is uptempo if we are never going to march down the field in a hurry?
Dinking and Dunking along with a strong running game is not bad, but it involves a lot of risk when the run gets shut down on early downs and the QB HAS to make the completion to keep chains going. It puts a lot of pressure on the QB in the process.
September 18th, 2014 at 10:21 am
Schiano was a billboard-deserving bad, bad man.
The root of all evil as it were.
Thank God everything is just peachy now.
September 18th, 2014 at 10:37 am
2 weeks ago I said McCown is money with the numbers just outside the hash mArks and within 8 yards. Within that box he’s an “okay” qb even if you account for the 2 or 3 ints he threw within that box.
Sorry boys but that’s all he’s got!! He can’t throw past 8 yards w any accuracy and lord forbid he gets pressured cuz he’ll just throw into the defenses hands. Damn shame!
September 18th, 2014 at 10:51 am
THese are just numbers which do not tell the whole story. As usual, some will blame the QB for all of the ills of the offense. Maybe the bucs has the three step drop because the Oline can’t block long enough to allow deeper passes. It only took the playcallers 3 quarters vs the panthers to figure that out. When the did the three step drop, they moved the ball. Now it is up the playcallers to mix it up. Some of you are just clueless. McCown was one of the better deep ball throwers last year and now you say he can’t? Every ill is not on the QB.
September 18th, 2014 at 10:53 am
Really? Is this “expert analysis”? or just the ravings of a drunken joe at the bar?
The short passing game makes the defense push up so you can open up the deep passes to you big wideouts. The running game is supposed to do that, but until the line gels to be a consistent run blocking unit, the short passing game is hard to defend and keeps the rusher and blitzers at bay.
The big question is do we have a coordinator that understands when to take the shot, or calls one play too many to put us in a 3rd and long letting the defense back off again. I think Tedford is that guy, but unfortunately he is not calling plays….yet!
September 18th, 2014 at 11:02 am
“The irony is people would be ripping Schiano and Sullivan a new one for almost the same production, yet somehow with the new staff the short passing game “is working”…0-2, 31st ranked passing game????”
Most of the people that ripped Schiano are no where to be found these days.
September 18th, 2014 at 11:09 am
@Buc1987: I called Schiano an idiot. He had no track record in the NFL and made many dumb decisions as the head coach here. Lovie has a track record, a championship pedigree as a coordinator and a head coach. And it is only 2 games into his first season here.
September 18th, 2014 at 11:23 am
@1987,
I’m still here, and I stand by everything I said about Schiano. Lovie cost us the rams game, but he’s still a very good coach. He’s miles and miles better than Schiano on his worst day.
September 18th, 2014 at 11:29 am
I think that tonight’s game will be very revealing. Again I think that the game plan for the last two games have been designed to get rid of the ball quickly due to the big pass rush of the Panthers and Rams. Going into the game the plan must have been not to get sacked or have negative plays.
Tonight there SHOULD be a new game plan and that SHOULD be to throw down field since the Falcons have no pass rush. It would also help if Tedford was calling the plays. A quarterback coach does not have the insight to “see” the intricacies of the play book and how to setup a successful play. He just has no feel for running a cohesive series.
If this doesn’t happen tonight, then I might join in the discussion of getting a new OC. I expect a lot of offense tonight – by BOTH teams.
September 18th, 2014 at 11:48 am
1987′
Look we long timers know you are sharper than that. You are far smarter than presenting a argument for Schiano.
Lovie is a different issue but they are galaxies apart.
September 18th, 2014 at 12:09 pm
This is going to be a long season but I’m not giving up hope of having a better offense until tedford gets back, he’s the one that wants to put points on the board
September 18th, 2014 at 12:12 pm
Hawaiian Buc,
If the Bucs come out of the shoot and go 0-8, is Lovie still light years ahead of Schiano?
Other than a Buccaneer win, I wish the fans would show unbias support/criticism.
Dominick sucked, and yet he gets called a rock star on this site. Raheem and Greg stunk too.
Lovie? I need to see measurable improvement. If I see the Falcon Kicker make 4 FGs and we lose, I will be pissed off.
I want to think we have a chance to win, but from what we have shown the past two weeks, we are going to get our butts pounded.
September 18th, 2014 at 2:41 pm
variety, balance, whatever you wanna call it…an offense that only proves it’s good at one thing is going to get defenses loading up for that one thing all the time. that is the problem with having a QB or RB that is below par or that the coaches don’t trust: they send a big signal to the opponent of what they don’t need to worry about.