Jameis And Fast Starts II
July 13th, 2017
Awful starts.
Yesterday, Joe opined about America’s Quarterback, Pro Bowler Jameis Winston, and fast starts. More importantly, the lack of fast starts.
As the Custodian of Canton, the King of New Port Richey, JoeBucsFan.com columnist Ira Kaufman has pointed out, in the 32 starts Jameis has made in the NFL, only five times has he thrown for a touchdown in the first quarter.
(Yesterday, Joe inaccurately reported Jameis threw his initial first quarter touchdown pass in the sixth game of the 2016 season at San Francisco. That was wrong. It wasn’t until the eighth game of the season when Jameis threw his first touchdown pass in the opening quarter, at home against Atlanta).
For the Bucs to take that next step and become a playoff team, both Jameis and the Bucs offense must improve that number.
Well, as heard yesterday when Joe climbed into the cage to tangle with his good friend “The Big Dog,” Steve Duemig of WDAE-AM 620, a caller by the name of “Sean” (Joe isn’t sure if it is Sean, Shaun or Shawn because it is radio after all) chimed in suggesting the stat of Jameis throwing for first quarter touchdowns is a hollow stat. The name of the game is scoring touchdowns no matter if it is from Jameis’ arm or a rushing touchdown.
Joe thought that was a fair point. So back to research Joe went. And upon further review, it’s still not pretty.
Through the first seven weeks of the 2016 season, the Bucs had one offensive touchdown and it was a run by Jameis against Denver.
In fact, through the first seven weeks, Roberto Aguayo (three field goals) had more points in the first quarter than any offensive player. Further, Kwon Alexander (an interception return) had as many first quarter points as the Bucs starting offense (Jameis’ seven-yard run). Through seven games? That is simply inexcusable.
Through 10 games, the Bucs defense scored as many touchdowns (Chris Conte, Alexander each with a pick-six) as the Bucs starting offense (Mike Evans catch, Jameis run) in the first quarter. Through 10 weeks! There is just no excuse for that.
People beat up the Bucs defense for being a sieve through much of the early part of the season, and there is certainly some truth to that. But the Bucs offense did the defense no favors through the first 10 weeks. When the defense has as many touchdowns as the offense through 10 weeks, that either suggests a team has a world class defense or its offense is stuck in mud.
In total, Jameis had touchdown passes in the opening quarter in two games last season — two against Seattle and one against Atlanta. The only other touchdown the offense scored in the first quarter was a two-yard run by Doug Martin in the opening frame of the win at San Diego in the first Sunday of December.
So in only 25 percent of games the Bucs scored a first-quarter touchdown.
Not sure if someone should point a finger at Jameis, the lack of receivers, a poor running game or a substandard gameplan to begin games, or a combination of all four, but for the Bucs to make the playoffs that trend cannot be repeated this fall.
July 13th, 2017 at 6:12 am
No more morning cup of joe?
July 13th, 2017 at 6:47 am
It’s difficult to start your day without a morning cup of Joe.
July 13th, 2017 at 6:59 am
Joe, what happened to the Morning Cup of Joe?
July 13th, 2017 at 7:07 am
@ Scotty
I think a certain someone is hiding certain orange shame after repeated adoration and doesn’t want to deal with it from certain posters. Morning Cup got pretty heated and it’s not in a certain someone’s best interest to continue with egg on their face. Just my opinion.
Too funny. Actually, Joe is in the midst of an advertising and reader habits experiment. But hey, it’s easier to think the comments get under Joe’s skin. LOL–Joe
July 13th, 2017 at 7:12 am
It’s an odd coincidence morning cup goes wayside once some emails get released. Morning cup of orange shame.
July 13th, 2017 at 7:15 am
I’d vote for the combination of all four Joe. In those first 7 games (3-4 record), Jameis only threw for over 250 yds twice (Atlanta & SF … we won both). Bucs only rushed for over 100 yds twice in regulation time (Carolina & SF … we won both). In our 3 wins Bucs had a TOTAL of 2 turnovers; in our 4 losses we had 10 turnovers … and INTs comprised most of those. Jameis did have 3 INTs in the 1st qtr in those 7 games, but the bigger issues were: (1) the number of incomplete passes that he threw; (2) the number of drive-killing penalties; (3) overall very ineffective rushing; (4) poor defensive play overall. Winning & losing was truly a T-E-A-M effort. We were fortunate to go 3-4 in those first 7 games (could’ve easily lost to the Panthers … they were just more beaten up than we were).
July 13th, 2017 at 7:26 am
Haha. Odd to see such a quick reply from you, Joe. Glad I finally got the answer for all the fellow posters asking all week long. N
July 13th, 2017 at 7:26 am
Cup of Joe Please Please Please Please………….
July 13th, 2017 at 7:29 am
Honestly, I hope you bring back the morning cup and leave the political nonsense off it.
July 13th, 2017 at 7:30 am
Cup of Joe is awesome….. especially now that we’re incorporating super hot Instagram models into the mix.
July 13th, 2017 at 7:32 am
Bet if you do more digging you find more 3 and outs. Wonder why the defense was worn out. So no if if they could not get the lead or at least tie they were in trouble. And to many time I watched them try to ram it across the goal line and get stopped as soon as they handed the ball off to the RB and lose yards 2 or 3 times in a row. It fell on everybody. It needs to change or we will see the same result.
July 13th, 2017 at 7:39 am
That’s two days in a row no cup of Joe
July 13th, 2017 at 7:44 am
I’d be curious to see what the average starting field position was last season for the offense. The D seemed to struggle early, too. Though, I recall the bucs inning he coin toss often which might scew he stats
July 13th, 2017 at 7:46 am
@ Mike
4 days now. I’ve been lethargic all week
July 13th, 2017 at 7:54 am
Regarding the morning cup of Joe, I agree with trying to exclude articles/stories regarding political spins as much as possible. The strange and absurd stories of odd things that occur around the world seem to peak my attention (not to mention the lovely ladies.) Darwin award winners as they are often sometimes referred to as are often humorous to read as well. Thanks.
July 13th, 2017 at 7:55 am
Mike
It’s been almost two weeks! I just went back a ways and it appears Joe has taken some too.
I can see why he may want to stop posting new one to test reader habits but to take old ones down?
I doubt it has anything to do with politics but maybe has something to do with posting Pucs he’s not authorized for and not giving credit for.
I too wish they would cone back.
July 13th, 2017 at 8:02 am
I do like the side bar link of “Hot Stories” on Joebucsfan.com. I just noticed that, nice to have links to older, hot topic reads and relevant stories on there.
July 13th, 2017 at 8:15 am
Agree with defense rules on pretty much everything he says.But i find it hard to fault the defense when turnovers set up easy scores and you are suddenly down
by 14 points. A better running game and more weapons will help us be a less predictable offense to prevent defense from shutting down the running game
and keying on Jameis.
That said I look for Jameis to mature and execute better against the better defenses or a good defensive game plan. He will have seen how good defenses play against him and hopefully puts that experience to good use.
July 13th, 2017 at 8:29 am
I never checked out the morning cup of joe links. The girls were always a welcome sight first thing in the morning but if I want to inform myself of the world, I probably will never think of this site as a go to. With that being said, it would be wonderful to never see a political post on a football-oriented site ever again.
It is definitely a team game. Fast starts and long drives will help our defense out immensly. Jamies gets so hyped. I feel that if you went back and looked at his first drives, often it will seem he overthrows a receiver. It’s hard to tell without knowing the routes the receiver is running but I liked what Dirk Kotter had to say about structuring a game plan to ease him into a game. I will never forget the game Luke McCown started for the Bucs against the Saints years ago. Gruden scripted that opening drive to perfection, short passes to get McCown into rhythm and then took shots downfield. We shall see I suppose
July 13th, 2017 at 8:30 am
After reading all the comments, I forgot what was the blog about?
Too funny. Actually, Joe is in the midst of an advertising and reader habits experiment. But hey, it’s easier to think the comments get under Joe’s skin. LOL–Joe
See Joe, we trigger you to write. You taught us well. lol
15 days…
July 13th, 2017 at 8:32 am
Hopefully Jamies can calm down on opening drives
July 13th, 2017 at 8:35 am
Also, red or blue, black or white and everything in between. If you are so interested in expressing your political opinion, please take your ‘expertise’ elsewhere. There is a reason you’re commenting about it here in this little corner of the web and not featured on Fox or CNN. Oh and this is football, not politics.
July 13th, 2017 at 8:51 am
Is it me or have the past Morning Cup of Joe’s been completely removed from the site? I went back a month from now and didn’t see one. They’ve been gone a very long time. New in. Old out. –Joe
July 13th, 2017 at 8:57 am
@Joe … “Actually, Joe is in the midst of an advertising and reader habits experiment.” Almost missed that Joe. So we’ve become an experiment? Like a bunch of chimps being evaluated to see which one will get sent into orbit? I’m scared now. I guess George Orwell was right after all.
July 13th, 2017 at 9:01 am
I have withheld comment on the missing morning cup of Joe thus far. When the political comments were lessened the comments went way down. Sports and politics in the same place, that’s a hard combination to beat. Add in the chick pics, that trio was unbeatable. BKNY… funny you say that about politics because most of your comments involved them.
July 13th, 2017 at 9:01 am
I think the slow starts are a combination of the four. We can add the fact that the Bucs almost always defer when the win the toss……that coupled with the worst return game giving them poor field position helps to slow the first quarter production.
If the defense is soft early….the Bucs don’t get many snaps.
I’d like to see the stats for opposing teams TDs against us in the first quarter.
July 13th, 2017 at 9:09 am
Joe has been deleting Morning Cups for the past month or so, it isn’t that they’ve been absent this whole time. … Let’s be clear. Joe was only deleting after the new day’s appeared. –Joe
@ 37
I rarely if ever brought up politics, I simply engaged in the the political posts Joe put up. If you posts something, he’s asking his readers to comment. Pretty simple.
July 13th, 2017 at 9:13 am
For the record, I’m all for zero political content on this site. There’s a million places to go for that stuff.
July 13th, 2017 at 9:36 am
There’s also a million places to go for pics of hot chicks? This is a Bucs football site..
July 13th, 2017 at 10:52 am
Wow! Many posters should go to Burger King so they can get it their way.
The old format was wonderful. The tame photos of the pretty ones, the weird and the wacky, the sports links, and the political links were all wonderful. If you don’t want to read political links or any other links, don’t click on them. Or, if you get there by mistake, just go back. The only political parts I don’t like come in the comments of BUCs articles – especially those comments from Big Hog.
July 13th, 2017 at 10:53 am
No passing TDs for 8 games is horrendous, if we are going to be a playoff team we can’t start that badly against the better teams in the league, the Packers and Patriots would rip us apart! Also, as much as we rip into Pewter Report (not without good reason), they’ve been publishing an article every week called Cover 3, latest one breaks down Winston’s accuracy issues and is actually quite an interesting read!
July 13th, 2017 at 10:55 am
Joe
So the oline gets a pass? We ranked 24th in rush and 9th in sacks allowed. How is it that no one is talking about the oline?
July 13th, 2017 at 11:02 am
I like the Morning Cup too…but this is off-season and if the JBF team wants to take a little time to themselves to sleep in so be it….
Silly season is so close to being done that I can see faint images in my head of #3 lifting the Lombardi….
July 13th, 2017 at 11:33 am
If Joe thought the o-line was terrible, he’d write it.
The leading rusher for the Bucs was a guy who couldn’t make the final-53 of the bungling Bears.
July 13th, 2017 at 12:03 pm
So by that logic you think Jameis is terrible 2x’s over. Smh, okay!
I’m guessing you erased the Dallas game out of your collective memory. Fair enough, can’t say I blame you.
July 13th, 2017 at 1:33 pm
Some wag just might point out that Jameis threw a TD pass in the first quarter in both his 1st and his 4th game as a pro. Of course, they went to Coty Sensabaugh of the Titans and Josh Norman of the Panthers, so there’s that.
tickrdr
July 13th, 2017 at 2:19 pm
Tampabaybucs make a great point about kickoffs. Couple that with the fact that our defense was awful at forcing short drives and that leaves us with below average time of posession and limited opportunitys.
I dont like this stat because it doesnt indicate how well or poor we played in each individual game. If I remember right we hadd about 2 minutes with the ball in the 1st of the Falcon game. In the Panther game our entire Dline was out injured so we were trying to eat ip as much clock as possible and keep the Defense off the field.
The problem that this article represents(to me) is games like the Rams, Cards and Broncos. In each of thpse games Jamies Winston sucked out loud. He was absolutely horrible. Missing easy throws, missing reads, jorrible decisions. We hardly had a chance to win any of them games because of Winstons inability.
I expect games like that out of a 2nd year QB, especially early on. I dont expect that feom Winston in his 3rd season especially with everubody considering him our franchise guy and also believing that we have a roster good enough to make yhe playoffs.
If we get more horrible games from Winston this year many will start rethinking this whole franchise QB thing. I dont see that happening
though.hunch
July 13th, 2017 at 3:09 pm
LOL at the “experiment” 😀
July 13th, 2017 at 3:41 pm
As I suspected we are all just lab rats for the evil creative genius known as “Joe”.
Regarding the lack of 1st Q scoring in 2016 – its become a big topic of late in the offseason because – well, frankly – there’s not much else to talk about – LOL
We did defer every time and won a good # of coin tosses – so there’s that 1st off.
Dirk likes to see how well he can establish the run game early – and the run game wasn’t working very well – especially early in the season (an obvious understatement). We had starting RBs dropping like flies the 1st few games as well and were down to our 4th and 5th string RBs by the Carolina game if I remember correctly.
I also agree with DB on this one. The Oline was a major culprit the majority of times that the offense was not clicking. D. Smith and Dotson averaged damn near a 10 yard penalty per game – EACH! The run blocking was bad and the pass protection was not that great on way too many downs in 2016. It all starts up front and our Oline which had looked so promising in 2015 made an obvious regression last year.
Hopefully the addition of Sweezy and the move to Center for Marpet will get our big boys up front headed in the right direction again this year. It won’t be hard to improve over what last year’s line accomplished – so the bar to see improvement is set pretty low as of right now IMO.
As long as Sweezy stays healthy – I have faith that our Oline will play pretty well this year. Biggest outstanding concern is at RT. Hopefully Dotson proves me wrong and has a career year – but short of that, I’m really hoping to see Benenoch far enough developed that he can earn that starting RT spot.
July 13th, 2017 at 5:49 pm
Pickgrin, agreed with your assestment but I think you have to blame Winston too. He had some horrible moments over the first 7-8 games last year. Too much rides on QB play in this league. We literally have no chance to win if Jamies comes out and lays a pure egg. Like he did against the Broncos, for example.
And I dont think this conversation is only important because its the offseason. Thrse awful starts to games are the difference between playoff caliber teams and pretenders. Yes, strange things happen but, generally speaking, teams that put together such poor showings, like we did last year, will inedivably get bounced from making the playoffs.
July 13th, 2017 at 10:16 pm
Jameis is, and most likely will always be, a slow starter. He’s a rhythm passer that gets better as he throws the ball more and he absolutely gets better as the pressure piles onto him. At FSU he was the same player – FSU would be down in the first half, then Jameis (who might have put them down) would place the team on his back and storm back. Dirk seems to think the way you fight this trend is by being ultra conservative, and all it seems to do is to keep Jameis from getting into a groove. I’m really hoping this year Dirk actually opens up the playbook again – he did such a great job of mixing things up in 2015 so the skill is there, but last year, Dirk was a disaster when it came to play calling, for the first 3 quarters of the game you could pretty much expect on 1st down Dirk would run it up the gut even if the other team had 18 people in the box – and this lead to 2nd long nearly all the time, teams pinning their ears back and it made the offensive line look terrible. If Dirk just mixes it up some then there should be success to be had. For example if you run it up the middle on every single first down for the entire second half – maybe come out and try a playaction pass instead! I know, crazy stuff. Also if you do run it up the middle on every first down for 3 quarters, don’t then come out in the shotgun on first down in the 4th – stay under center and perhaps you’ll trick the other team. If you need more of an explanation Dirk just let me know.
July 24th, 2017 at 4:43 pm
Has nobody watched James in college. In the 1st quarter he’s way too hyped. Always sails his passes. Very inaccurate. Then he settles down and is money.