More Evidence Of Better Defense
June 12th, 2016
Correcting a shame and a sham
The defense cannot help but get better this season.
Last year’s 70 percent completion percentage allowed was so galling it made the thought of guzzling warm Miller Lite desirable.
Slant passes? Ha! It was as if the Bucs didn’t want to cover a slant pass. Press coverage? Nah! Let the receiver get a good jump off the line. No need to try to blow the guy up at the line and screw up his timing.
The Bucs’ pass defense last year was both a shame and a sham.
Well, Scott Kacsmar of Football Outsiders has been crunching numbers, and as stat geeks are wont to do to make themselves sound smart, he has a made-up stat called “failed completions,” which is actually an oxymoron. A completion is not a failure.
What Kacsmar is referring to are passes that fail to get a first down. (This should be known as “failed conversion.”) He has listed teams in this category and the Bucs were 30th in the NFL last year forcing a failed conversion.
Nearly 80 percent of completed passes against Tampa Bay went for first downs. Think about that! It is so horrible, Joe is nearly without words to describe the misery.
Only New Orleans and Tennessee were worse.
Joe has to believe this statistic will improve.
June 12th, 2016 at 9:11 am
Yeah and imagine Winston getting the ball back, he could of scored 50+ points, 7 TD’s passes per game!! Woohoo Go Bucs!
June 12th, 2016 at 9:17 am
Its hard to believe that the sheep and lovie loyalist wanted to see a third year of straight failure!!!! If you look at all the scrub and backup QB’s for the year, You can when they got to rack up their stats against the incompetent one!!!!! Yes coach my scheme just helped get some Qb’s paid!!!!! The worst part for the Bucs players were other teams laughing at them on the field asking why they did not adjust and why they were not in position to make a play!!! The answer is they were coached that way!!!!!!
June 12th, 2016 at 9:34 am
I think that the coaches trying not to make any comparisons to last year is a good thing. Obviously the players and coaches have moved on…and they are developing positive (can do) energy on both sides of the ball. Go Bucs!
June 12th, 2016 at 9:55 am
What goes down must come up, like the Bucs on the rebound.
June 12th, 2016 at 10:22 am
Buc realist I just wonder why you over exaggerate all the time. I AM sure that no REAL Buc fan wants three years in a row of devastating poor defense like we’ve had. You have also buried Lovie numerous times. (news flash— he is gon e) Give it a rest. Not impressive at all. With the energy you waste on hating others you could actually be a little positive for a change.
June 12th, 2016 at 10:25 am
it made the thought of guzzling warm Miller Lite desirable
LMFAO!!! Good one Joe.
June 12th, 2016 at 10:32 am
@Old Buc Fan
Oh, ask others, This is me being very positive this offseason, Just ask!!!! As far as burying the Incompetent one, Lets just say I get to because I and few others tried to tell you all this 2 years ago!!!!!
Training camp and Preseason will be the big “burying” of coach my scheme!!! Its going to be a great summer!!!
Go Bucs!!!!!
June 12th, 2016 at 10:47 am
I don’t think Lovie was as horrible as some on here suggest. But After two years of watching his product, I can not defend the man and pretend that he didn’t deserve to be fired.
Let me just say, our 2013, while we weren’t loaded, the cupboard wasn’t bare either. And there were expectations that come with a decent roster headlined by Darelle Revis and a qb that just shattered every single season passing record your franchise holds. And yet, Greg Schiano didn’t deliver and was fired after 4-12. So the Glazers bring in Lovie because of his experience and was expected to get results with a pretty good roster. And this is what I never hear brought up. Lovie was not brought in to start a rebuilding project ok. He was supposed to take that roster led by a pretty good defense and get results, and his experience was supposed to be what would allow him to do what his predecessor could not. Yet, somehow Lovie makes this team worse, going 2-14 and now all of a sudden this turns into a rebuilding project when that was NOT was he was hired to do, so you can imagine how frusterated the Glazers must have been, and Lovies firing in this light seems a little less surprising.
June 12th, 2016 at 11:00 am
Realist seems pretty chipper lately, I do too. Lovie drained all the energy from this team with his coaching style, I’m ready for a shot of adrenaline this year, playoffs or not, I see real growth this year
June 12th, 2016 at 11:08 am
Last season, we all know that our pass defense STUNK like a OUTHOUSE. But while reading this article, I notice that The Titans and Saints were the teams that stunk more than us ( in pass defense) . But in the three games we played against the Saints and Titans, we were held to under 200 yards passing. 551 passing yards( to be exact) in three games against these cream-puff defenses. How can that be? with our TOP-5 offense, the Saints even beat us at home and held us to 176 yards passing. And it came at the worst time we were 6-6 fighting for a Wild Card berth. Was it poor coaching or poor play from the players ( or both)?.
June 12th, 2016 at 11:20 am
@LakeLandBuc:
Excellent post, and just the sort of thing I might point out.
For those concerned about Mike Evans, I only hope that he catches the ball IN or carries it TO the end zone next year. Despite his second thousand yard plus season, he only scored THREE TDs. As a comparison, Allen Robinson had 14 TDs, and his teammate Allen Hurns had 10 TDs last year. Of the leading receivers last year, the next lowest total was 6 TDs for Demaryius Thomas.
tickrdr (America’s Doubting Thomas)
June 12th, 2016 at 11:20 am
Wow! 80% of passes for first downs … Are you sure that’s right?
June 12th, 2016 at 11:23 am
80% sounds too low to me.. If you really watched the games , it seemed to push 100% conversion rate!!!
June 12th, 2016 at 11:34 am
We averaged 183.6 passing yards per game in the three games against these pathetic defenses. UNBELIEVABLE…and it has NOTHING to do with our SMELLING defense. It has everything to do with our HIGH OCTANE offense. With our offensive staff returning, this has to change in 2016. These type of performances from offense should not be tolerated. Our offense did put up over 6,000 total yards, but they weren’t consistent. To win in the NFL, you have to bring it EVERY week. The Saints defense gave up over 6,600 total yards, but we struggled against them (twice).
June 12th, 2016 at 11:41 am
He ain’t never gonna get rid of that Tast For LOVIE BALLS! It’s got him SPRUNG!
June 12th, 2016 at 11:48 am
Concerning the post: it tells that we will have at least 2 maybe 3 new starters, and maybe just maybe one big name cut from last year’s team….and a much better and much needed pass rush!!
June 12th, 2016 at 12:03 pm
@LakeLandBuc … “Our offense did put up over 6,000 total yards, but they weren’t consistent.
Excellent point. Our defense was a lot more consistent than our offense last year (of course, our defense was consistently bad). But I’d think that consistency is something that young teams take awhile to develop. Gut feel is that our offense will make giant strides in that direction this year.
Folks keep calling it a ‘Top 5 offense’ but that’s misleading I think. It’s true if Total Yards Gained is the criteria, but not so if Points Scored is the criteria. We were #20 in terms of Points Scored, and that’s the only thing that really counts from my perspective.
June 12th, 2016 at 12:20 pm
I’m confident the Bucs will be better on offence as well this year, but we’re talking about defense right now so I’ll stick to that.
VH3 might be short, but he’s about 205 if I recall correctly. He ought to improve the crappy tackling. The Tampa Two always relied on sure tackling, but that was sorely lacking last year. I guess that helps explain the obscene first down rate.
I think Ryan Smith is reputed to be a sure tackler also so that should help too.
If Mike Smith simply let’s his players play and improves tackling the defense will be twice as good … or half as bad.
If we get one more Smith on this team I’ll scream!!!
Please pray for the victims of this horrible Islamic terrorist attack we had in Orlando last night … 53 dead so far.
June 12th, 2016 at 12:35 pm
Lmao Realist!
June 12th, 2016 at 12:49 pm
Defense Rules Says:
Another excellent post as well.
tickrdr
June 12th, 2016 at 11:01 pm
More evidence of a better defense? Please! The only evidence that counts is..WINNING. Holding your opponent to less points than you have. Do that and we have true evidence our Defense has improved. Until then? You got no evidence. All you got is a wish and a prayer!