Jim Bates Didn’t Want To Adjust
January 30th, 2010
One of the saddest things for Joe about the 2009 season was how the defense went from scary to bad to horrible under defrocked defensive coordinator Jim Bates.
The defense under Bates set a franchise record for giving up 25 or more points in successive games.
Joe remembers what a great job Bates did in Miami — he should have succeeded Dave Wannstedt as head coach he did such a good job. But for as good of a job Bates did in Miami, he did that awful of a job with the Bucs.
One of the reasons, aside from the obvious, that Raheem the Dream defrocked Bates was that he was unwilling to adjust or be flexible. That’s the word from Woody Cummings of the Tampa Tribune.
It seems Raheem the Dream wanted Bates to mold a defensive game plan that would attack the weak points of an opponent’s offense.
In short, Raheem the Dream wanted Bates to play different styles of defense from week to week because teams were too easily able to game plan against Bates’ defense.
While the Bucs will play some zone-based Tampa 2 now and then, they also will be more inclined to split the deep secondary into three parts and play Cover 3. Or they could go man and play Cover 1. Or they could drop seven defenders back and play a quarters coverage.
This is nothing new, really. The Bucs started this a couple years ago when Monte Kiffin was the defensive coordinator. Morris intended to continue the trend, but the plan didn’t work quite the way he envisioned it.
Former coordinator Jim Bates never really bought into the hybrid approach and so Morris’ plan was inadvertently shelved. With Morris back in charge of the defense, though, his hybrid is back on the grease board, with the chief objective to make the defense less predictable.
Joe just knows that the Bucs average points allowed per game dropped nearly 13 points with Raheem the Dream running the defense than with Bates. That’s pretty dramatic.
January 30th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Near the end of the year, when other teams either had clinched playoff births, or phoned it in, the defense played half decent at times. Although, I do recall Atlanta shredding them in the second half of the last game. Lets see how they start out next year defensively, before we applaud too hard for the Dreams coordinator skills. I suspect they arent that great.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Eric, you’re a moron with no understanding of football, stick to your couch there buddy.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
the game at this point has past bates by…….it happens and it happens quick…..where is he going to buffalo i think?….once you sign with buffalo you know its the end…just ask t.o……adam from ny
January 30th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Tampa’s personnel didn’t fit what Bates had done in Miami & elsewhere, esp. up front. One wonders in retrospect why he was hired in the first place, but that’s moot now.
A lot of the Bucs’ struggles weren’t due to scheme, but to youth & inexperience.
January 30th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Mike J, he might have been hired because the GM or the owners considered his experience to be a hedge against Morris’ youth. Bad reason, but that may be it.
January 30th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Cire,
I understand 3-13……………………………..do you have any evidence that the Dream is a good coach? Please enlighten me.
January 30th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Good point, Vince.
January 31st, 2010 at 8:09 pm
even with the dream being totally lost on the sidelines, we could easily finish 7-9 next year if we go about 3-3 in the division because the rest of the schedule is a joke…..one losing team lines up after the next for us….the problem is if we play about .500 ball next year and keep raheem and then get a tougher schedule we will most likely wind up 5-11 the next year …strike pending of course….but then you wasted 3 years with radio head and are basically at square 1 again….adam from ny
ps jonnys a moron
February 1st, 2010 at 9:43 am
Adam, you are one interesting character. Use an ati-semitic slur againt the Glazers and call Morris “radio head.” Class act.
February 1st, 2010 at 10:39 am
defining someones background is not anti-semetic…its all in your head vince…..your creating things that arent there…besided there arent many jewish people who are anti semetic…..get my drift…..adam from ny
February 1st, 2010 at 11:09 am
Adam:
Knock it off. There’s zero reason to bring up anyone’s ethnicity in any post, even in a response.
Joe’s seen about a half-dozen posts in the past couple of days where you’re making some Jewish reference — generally related to the Glazers — no matter how veiled.
Just drop it.
February 1st, 2010 at 3:03 pm
ok joe you got it…..i only mentioned it once but never again………..adam