Can’t Blame The Receivers
May 16th, 2018
Sticky.
We live in an age where if you can’t slap a damned number on something, folks have no use for it.
Joe grew up suspicious of stats years ago, outside of the bedrock statistics of sports: wins, losses, passing and rushing yards, picks, sacks, batting average, homers, RBIs, stolen bases, ERA, saves, etc. Joe has never forgotten the words of a high school teacher who once said how one can twist numbers any way they wish in order to prove a point. And that’s true to this day.
But in the following stat, though it is very subjective, it’s hard to find fault with Bucs receivers last year.
The well-trained orangutans at the PFF tribe decided to document dropped passes. Why is this subjective? Go ahead and Google “dropped passes statistics” and you will find wildly different numbers for the same receivers in the same season.
What may be a drop to some is a pass off target to others. You get the drift.
Anyway, if one is to put any stock into the research of the PFF tribe, the Bucs were one of the best teams as far as catching the football last season. Only seven teams dropped fewer passes and five of those teams were playoff teams (of the 12 teams with the most drops, only two made the playoffs).
Folks whine about DeSean Jackson not being able to haul in long passes from America’s Quarterback, Pro Bowler Jameis Winston, but last year Jackson dropped just one pass all season, per the PFF tribe.
Joe isn’t fully sure what this says about the Bucs other than you cannot blame the Bucs receivers for losing 11 games.
May 16th, 2018 at 6:09 am
Jackson only dropped one, because _______ ____ _____ ___ ___ ___ ____ (yep, you know the answer).
May 16th, 2018 at 6:27 am
They will soon turn on you JW! 11 games last season st evade at certain times in those 11games the Bucs did not execute….sometimes on offense…sometimes on defense, we just didn’t execute!!
May 16th, 2018 at 6:30 am
We lost games for the following reasons:
Poor playcalling in the red zone
Turnovers
No running game
No pass pressure
Poor run coverage
Kicking
But the main reason we lost every game is because GMC was on the field (sarcasm)
May 16th, 2018 at 6:34 am
Yup. Curious to see the posts here from the people that don’t mind laying into any/all players and coaches , except Jameis of course . He is off limits. Not allowed to critique him.
The best I heard last year was :
Desean Jackson is too fast (so it was his fault and not Jameis long ball) . Yah , you know who you are poster …starts with an L
May 16th, 2018 at 6:43 am
“I GOT THE DRIFT ALRIGHT” Joe.
They dropped one pass all season but a pile of POOP every game!!! At least that’s what the eye and nose test showed. NO TWISTING OF NUMBERS NEEDED. Just the old football and Gut sacks, if you know what I mean?
May 16th, 2018 at 6:45 am
Not that I think the receivers are at fault, but this doesn’t vindicate them either. You know, in order to record a drop, you have to get open and be in position to actually catch a ball.
May 16th, 2018 at 6:47 am
BigHog, I’m with ya. the execution of both sides of the ball from last year is needed.
Should we drive to OBP and pelt them with stones???
May 16th, 2018 at 6:49 am
Well considering that when it came to moving the ball, Jameis and the receivers did just fun. The 2 biggest issues with our offense last season were A – No running game. And B – terrible redzone scoring percentage.
May 16th, 2018 at 6:51 am
just fine*
May 16th, 2018 at 7:12 am
Defense and O-Line and RB play is why we drafted 7th overall. Not QB play. Jameis is not blameless in the poor play at times, but the offense would have won us 2 more games if the defense gets just one hold. It is much like C Archer, we constantly give him the lead and he can’t ever get a shutdown inning (which is why he has A+ stuff but is a C+ pitcher). If Smitty does his part, we will be fine this year. We re-vamped the O-line and RB position (hopefully Sims and Rodgers will get beat out). The defensive line is improves and our DBs have some good potential. It is all on Smitty and his sh*tty scheme. Does he learn from last year or does he truly have smartest man in the room syndrome?
May 16th, 2018 at 7:28 am
Any Bucs fan who actually watch those games knows Jackson dropped plenty more than one pass. Come on, now. Even Joe said it was subjective.
Heck, I could randomly pull up a 2017 game that Jackson played in and prove the stat wrong.
Stp. Being. Sheep.
May 16th, 2018 at 7:30 am
Winning cures everything.
Fans will be much more forgiving of Jameis if this team actually makes the playoffs.
Heck, if they somehow manage to win a playoff game, fans may even back off on the GMC hate…
May 16th, 2018 at 8:37 am
Dropping only one ball, eh? How many times did he run the wrong route? How many times did he give up on a play because he thought the ball wasn’t in his area to catch it. Misleading stat if you have a WR only interested in making stats for himself. Say what you want about Keyshawn Johnson when he was here, but he was involved in blocking down the field on plays where the ball wasn’t coming to him. I don’t see Jackson involved in a play unless his number is called.
May 16th, 2018 at 9:14 am
Jackson didn’t drop many cause he didn’t make an effort to try to catch anything that wasn’t right in the bread basket.
May 16th, 2018 at 9:26 am
Walter Seidel
Because: he only tries to catch balls that are perfectly thrown?
May 16th, 2018 at 9:28 am
the best college course i took was called
“HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS”
May 16th, 2018 at 9:44 am
But they drop passes at critical moments
May 16th, 2018 at 10:17 am
when your play calling is predictable and the defense knows what your doing based off formation and personnel, its hard to execute!!!!
remember luke kuechley calling out plays as soon as the offense broke the huddle…..he knew what plays were coming based off formation and personnel…..
offense needs to be less predictable…..that falls on the coaches shoulders…..
#NOEXCUSESIN2018!!!!…#PRESSURESONTHECOACHES!!!!….GO BUCS!!!!
May 16th, 2018 at 10:56 am
there was one game where Evans got his hands on 2 TD looks. They were difficult catches but they were ones he is cappable of making. He missed both(not recorded as drops). We might have won that game had he mase one of those catches.
Humphries coughed up the ball on a potential game winning drive.
Brate dropped a very easy TD pass that probably cost us a game.
OJs hands werent that impressive. He probably had the most drops on the team.
Doug Martin dropped a walkin TD an back to back drops cost us 4th quater drive against the Falcons.
Timeliness matters. Its nice to have WRs that make plays in the clutch and the Bucs didnt do too much of that.
For a reciving core thats supposted to be deadly I was not very impressed last year.
May 16th, 2018 at 11:33 am
Jackson didn’t drop balls but he failed to adjust to the ball in the air. He may need (different) contacts.
May 16th, 2018 at 11:43 am
doctor_berto Says:
May 16th, 2018 at 9:14 am
“Jackson didn’t drop many cause he didn’t make an effort to try to catch anything that wasn’t right in the bread basket.”
That’s the perfect response to this article and the “stat” that DJax only dropped one pass last year.
I was going to say something similar – but you worded it perfectly doc – so why bother…
I’m not down on DJax – he’s an excellent weapon if used properly and doesn’t seem to have lost much if any speed even though he’s past 30 now.
But for $11M a year – dude better be willing to lay out once in a while if necessary. That’s all I’m saying because we sure didn’t see any of that last year.
May 16th, 2018 at 11:54 am
Tells me that when the ball is getting to the WR, the catch is being made.
Problem seems to be with getting the pass there.
May 16th, 2018 at 12:41 pm
Blind Winston loyalist is what most of you are. Funny how all the other previous quarterbacks that played with Jackson got huge plays out if him and unless you think Cousins is great who has been throwing to him and successfully I might add? Hmmm must be Jackson’s fault Winston’s deep ball is inaccurate and unpredictable. Shame on Jackson because Gidwin caught 1 deep ball all year.
May 16th, 2018 at 1:14 pm
That is testimony to Winston’s inaccuracy. The shoulder was the blame last season, so let’s see if these two can make an impact this season barring in other excuses.
May 16th, 2018 at 1:27 pm
Noles fans are blinded by their bias! Jameis has had 74 career turnovers between his 30 fumbles and 44 interceptions compared to only 79 scores! Nuff said!!
May 16th, 2018 at 4:26 pm
No. It means you can’t blame losses on dropped passes. That’s it.
May 16th, 2018 at 4:34 pm
The Bucs had their best passing offense in team history – they were #4 in the league last year. This idea that the passing game was an issue is fake news, it’s literally the best we’ve ever seen out of guys in a Bucs uniform.
With that said the Bucs can certainly improve on what they did and that is exciting. The timing with Jameis and DJax was off, in large part because someone with special speed can take time to get used to – and when that time came Jameis had the shoulder injury and clearly wasn’t throwing at anything close to 100%. Godwin, down the strech, looked good. Evans, by his high standards, had an off year, but still had 1000 yards. The midget Hump, he had a nice season of catching balls at the line of scrimmage and getting 8 yards on 3rd and 10. OJ and Brate had nice numbers. Sims, once Dirk remembered he was on the team, had a nice second half of the season. There’s a lot of people who got the ball and when Jameis has options he likes to spread the ball around, so we might not have another 1500 yard season out of Evans again anytime soon, but that’s OK, and it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong.
May 16th, 2018 at 6:42 pm
One thing that does seem like a problem for our receivers…DJAX not so much…but when you watch the game highlights notice how often Jameis has to throw to targets with defenders on them. Notice how often the other team has targets that are wide open…of course when they start with a ten yard cushion that helps.
May 16th, 2018 at 8:33 pm
So the point of this article was……. ???
Maybe D-Jax only had 1 drop, but he had at least 4 other long balls that he made almost zero effort on.
Also no way to account for whether a receiver ran the correct route or the QB put the ball in the wrong place. But blame goes to the QB, unless otherwise noted.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. That’s how it is for all teams, it’s not just ppl hating on Jameis.