Why The Run Game Stinks
October 26th, 2018
Needs to step up.
The Bucs really do want to get Peyton Barber and Ronald Jones on track. It’s just they can’t.
So why is the running game stuck in the mud? Jenna Laine of ESPN takes a closer look. In short, it’s on the whole team, not just the running backs and not the offense.
Laine noted the defense was so hideous pre-Mark Duffner as defensive coordinator, the Bucs had little choice but to throw, or get boat-raced.
The offensive line isn’t playing as well as many expected prior to the season, among other issues, Laine types.
The Bucs are averaging 2.13 rushing yards before first contact — 27th in the league — indicating that the blocking needs to improve. Bucs running backs are averaging 1.45 yards after contact per rush — 27th in the league — meaning they’re going down too easily after contact.
Bottom line: The Bucs’ lack of a ground game is on the whole team.
Are the Bucs running backs that good? Well, Barber did well when given a shot last year. This year he’s been pretty ho-hum. With Jones, the fact a high second-round pick struggles to get on the field should tell you something.
As far as blocking, Joe wouldn’t mind if Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht could find a right guard by the trade deadline Tuesday. Caleb Benenoch is an OK run blocker at best. But if he was any good at run blocking (his pass blocking is awful), he wouldn’t be splitting time with Evan Smith. And if Smith could have unseated Benenoch, he’d already be starting.
October 26th, 2018 at 10:07 am
Blocking is terrible, RBs are terrible, defense is terrible, special teams are terrible. Offense is decent… Why is Koetter coach again? Anyone can have 4/5s of garbage in this league heck JPP should/could be a player coach and do just as well(badly).
October 26th, 2018 at 10:12 am
One nfl quality lineman on roster will lead to piss poor oline play. Bucs have 3 starters on the oline that could not make another roster much less start. Dotson should have been out of league 8 years ago
October 26th, 2018 at 10:18 am
2.13 yards before contact sounds too high. Barber is continually getting hit by defensive lineman immediately upon receiving handoffs and the rookie has never broken a tackle in his NFL career. No one would be good behind this offensive line.
October 26th, 2018 at 10:20 am
Would be nice if our offensive line knew who to block
October 26th, 2018 at 10:20 am
Same stats, pretty much, when Martin was here, and Martin got the blame.
I’ve been saying this for a while: the run game blocking schemes are the problem.
Pass protection > Run blocking.
October 26th, 2018 at 10:29 am
Bring back Kenyatta Walker before Gruden gets him.
October 26th, 2018 at 10:34 am
Improve the running game, okay lets do the following…
*Get rid of Doug Martin……check
*Get a big, mean, greasy center to change our attitude…..check
*Draft a game-breaker @ running back…..check
And still we have the same crappy ground game we have had for a years now. Whats the common denominator??? The O-Line Coach sucks and has always sucked.
October 26th, 2018 at 10:41 am
With the exception of Jensen we have nothing on the O-line. Marpet is just average and don’t get me started on Smith. Alex Cappa seriously ? Benenoch is a human turnstile. Dotson plays hurt. Licht isn’t as smart as he seems. The Glazers will eventually grow tired of his BS drafts. No runnning back could ever survive with our O-line. They are an embarrassment.
October 26th, 2018 at 10:41 am
We need to give the OL more money. Maybe then they could push forward and not give up safeties.
October 26th, 2018 at 10:50 am
It’s amazing how many people want to fix the running game by getting a new running back, even if it means giving up precious draft picks. Maybe it’s a fantasy thing.
Put me in the “fix the running game by fixing the oline” crowd.
October 26th, 2018 at 11:02 am
No buc4evr
Marpet is not average lol. D smith is much better than lazy analysis gives credit for. Cappa is still learning so ya seriously bro.
Licht is smarter than you think. Sick of the draft bashing. You guys are so dumb. Look at every single teams draft. There are at least 3 busts per team.
He had a rough 2014 draft. Humphries Evans Godwin oj Jensen fitz marpet Kwon brate Jameis j Evans beckwith Conte vh3(slot) Whitehead Davis and rojo vea mj are still yet to be determined. They outweigh the bad. Catch up.
October 26th, 2018 at 11:03 am
ChanEpic Says:
October 26th, 2018 at 10:07 am
Blocking is terrible, RBs are terrible, defense is terrible, special teams are terrible. Offense is decent…
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You’re not wrong – weighing the pros and cons of this team, the only thing keeping this team afloat is the passing offense. Gotta give Koetter credit for that, he does have good play design and they CAN pretty much throw against anyone. Other than that: The bucs are paying a ton of money to jensen and marpet for (and soon to be donovan smith) for a running game that is complete ASS. Our pass defense is ASS, our special teams are ASS. Thank god for JPP, Nassib and our Receivers/TE’s. I’ll say this though, and surprised no one has talked about this – letting Carlton Davis press last week was awesome. He was absolutely fantastic. Guys like him and Justin Evans – theyre keepers
October 26th, 2018 at 11:13 am
I agree. Im still not sold on Barbar and Jones has speed but needs blocking. The O-line is so awful and I dont know why Jason light thought it would be good. LT Smith has been very average but we have nothing behind him, Division 3 Marpet is out best gut but that’s like bragging your the tallest dwarf in the room, We dont have a legit starter at all for RG and that was lights plan, and Dotson is injury prone and getting old fast. A running game would dramatically help our defense.
Yes this also effects Winston when he cant ever calmly go through progressions. I liked Fitz because he makes quicker decisions to get rid of the ball. Jameis could be awesome if he had time to be calm.
October 26th, 2018 at 11:52 am
We have 2 of 3 running backs with practically zero experience in the NFL in our stable (Blame the GM). What were we expecting from them? Besides here are Barber’s carries for his last 4 games: 11, 13, 7, 8… Come’on man (Blame the coordinator). That’s a lack of commitment to run the ball (Blame the Head Coach). Barber is at 3.5 yds a carry w/ 74 attempts. The finger can’t wag at his effort! Yet it can wag at the coaches lack of attempts or the O lines lack of push. We are running the ball only 37% of the time. That is a team NOT trying to establish a running game.
October 26th, 2018 at 12:59 pm
“Blocking is terrible, RBs are terrible, defense is terrible, special teams are terrible.”
And yet we beat the defending SB champs and beat the best team in our division in their house.
I wonder how many of us would have called the Bucs “terrible” before the season started is we knew they would open against that schedule 3-3.
The NFL season is dynamic. Teams generally do not play the same level through the entire season. The really good teams generally start playing their best football down the stretch because they realize the season is not static and they need to improve and play their best football down the playoff run stretch.
And so for me the question is will the Bucs remain mediocre…that’s what they are now at 3-3….500 in this league against our opening schedule is NOT terrible. But we have been truly inconsistent in all phases of the game.
The question is…are they an improving team…do we think they’ll play better football that final six games than the first six?
I’m still optimistic.
October 26th, 2018 at 1:17 pm
@StPete, I too am optimistic, but I cannot understand why Koetter is still here. He has shown me 0 as it relates to consistency and Licht is just as hot and cold with his picks. After all of this time, why are they still .500/mediocre? Licht and Koetter are my answers to that question and at this point in their tenure, I’d rather see JPP coach and GM then those two. My optimism is in that they will continue to be .500 and at the end of the season we get somebody else in here. HECK, I’d LOVE for the Glazers to back a brinks truck up to Nick Saban’s house and I HATE NICK SABAN, that’s what this mediocrity has reduced me to.
October 26th, 2018 at 1:18 pm
Wow, shocking that Laine sees the o-line sucks at run blocking.
She sees.
We see it.
Why are others so stubborn to admit it?
October 26th, 2018 at 4:23 pm
Chan
I largely feel the way you do but I place Koetter in the same boat as Jameis…as Duffner…perhaps GMC and other star players….it’s time to win. But I’m willing to give them all ten more games before I really want to blow it all up.
As for Nick Saban you hit a nerve there…like you I do not like Saban but like you I certainly recognize his greatness…at the college level.
I’m not a large fan of college coaches jumping to the NFL. There are obvious exceptions but there are also a lot of great college coaches who simply do not fit in the NFL. I think of Saban in Miami…Steve Spurrier!!!
NFL teams do not get to recruit…there is a salary cap and a draft to keep some competitive balance. Every week in the NFL you are playing a team that realistically has a chance to beat you.
Not in college ball. There are maybe 3 or 4 real challenges and then you hit the playoffs for the real competition.
Saban knows the system and has it figured out. He may be the best recruiter in the land but I honestly do not know how much of that is just Bama’ tradition. I think Urban Meyer recruits well as does Jimbo…those three guys seem to be able to sell high school kids and their parents…not so sure they would be able to sell mature professional football players.
October 26th, 2018 at 4:33 pm
Seems like there was lots of confidence for this line when some folks were arguing against drafting Nelson
Scapegoats … Underachievers. Yet.. it seems/seemed like there’s enough talent there that it’s fair to have expected that they should be doing better
October 26th, 2018 at 4:36 pm
But Joe will still blame Doug Martin.
October 26th, 2018 at 5:07 pm
I’m a big believer in the future success of Vita Vea, he has all-pro level talent. But man, man did it heart me so much on draft night when the Colts picked Quenton Nelson 1 pick in front of us.
Rojo would prolly have at least a couple 40+ yard runs if we had managed to snag that dude.
October 26th, 2018 at 5:11 pm
All you guys that don’t like Jason Light, I don’t get it. He’s doing the best that he can to bring good players here. Every GM misses on draft picks and draft busts happen. The reason he gets so much crap is for Aguao. It was a reach and we all new it at the time. Open up your eyes. He’s doing the best he can.
October 26th, 2018 at 5:11 pm
I’m not sure I buy the yards after contact stat. If your first contact is a defensive lineman on your own line of scrimmage because there are no holes to run through, then obviously yards after contact is going to be low.
October 26th, 2018 at 5:38 pm
I think it has a lot to do with what koetter had talked about a while ago. This offense tipping there hand on there plays. I have watched every snap of every bucs game since 1998. Minus the time I left Raymond James at halftime of a Texans game some years back. Where Arian foster had a bad virus or something and no one wanted to tackle him. But point is me and my bucs buddies can call a run every time. This will be a run and sure enough it is. It’s like we change are personal when we run in jumbo formation or something. I don’t understand why we don’t run out of the shotgun more with 4 wide receivers and a tight end out wide. To open some lanes up. It just seems to me like every one it is just one big cluster in the middle of the field with the running back trying every thing he can just to get back to line of scrimmage or gain one yard. And one other play I hope to never see is the toss or sweep right. To the short side of the field. That play doesn’t even work in madden. Let alone the nfl
October 26th, 2018 at 5:53 pm
I guess the Bucs will be stuck with same OL and RB coaches until Koetter gets fired, because they sure get a pass from the media in Tampa
October 26th, 2018 at 6:10 pm
These OL coaches and RB coaches helped end Martin’s career, helped end Charles Sims career, have held back Rogers and Barber, contributed to wasting a draft pick last year on a rb and now they’re working on wasting Jones talent.
If Jameis wasn’t such a stud athlete, he’d probably be on injured reserve .
They fixed the defensive coaching problem, now fix the running game coaching problem.
October 26th, 2018 at 7:43 pm
@Sumo
Coming from someone who recognizes all the good that Licht has done during his tenures, as well as holding the opinion that JL is more often than not well above average when it comes to drafting and signing young players/ UDFAs.
I just don’t feel 100 perent confident in Lichts vision, nor do I feel that he has done all that he could to make this team as good as it could possibly be. Just this offseason there were several players he could have signed and decisions he could have made that were right there to be made and he, just, didn’t.
Didn’t sign Eric Reid even after the clearly inferior safety Chris Conte had gone down due to injury, despite the fact that the former probowler was still available for some time after said injury. He could have also signed Tre Boston another solid strong safety for some time during the offseason and chose not to. Didn’t sign a proven #2/3 corner in Breshaud Breeland and instead chose to sign a literally who player like Marcus Williams.
On top of that he chose to give a 35 year old 8 million instead of just using that money to sign Morris Claiborne, or maybe he could have used that money towards signing a legit number 1 corner named Trumaine Johnson. And he had several highly questionable picks in this most recent draft.
Jason Licht has been at Best a B minus gm and thats being generous. He just tends to take too many gambles on aging/ injured players and most of the time it blows up in his face, and he does this really annoying thing where he’s always a year late to address obvious pressing needs.
Like the obvious lack of receiver depth we had in 2016, and the obvious lack of depth/ actual good starters on the D-line and running back/ O-line in 2017, and in 2018 he chose to gamble on rookies at corner and safety, and completely neglected the right side of the O-line.
Having said all that, if we got 7-9 or worse this season, I vote we move on from licht unless we hire someone like Bill Cowher or Bill Polian to oversee him,