Bucs Struggled Terribly Passing For First Downs Last Year In Second Half
May 29th, 2023
Sad statistic.
Before diving into this, keep in mind the Bucs had the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady, Mike Evans at receiver and one of the better YAC guys in the NFL last year, Playoff Lenny, all involved in the passing game.
The Bucs’ passing last season in the second half of games was a borderline joke. That’s hard for Joe wrap his head around but it’s the cold hard truth.
Handicapper and stathead Warren Sharp analyzed how teams moved the ball through the air in the second half of games in 2023, the money half.
In fact, only eight teams were worse than the Bucs. Tampa Bay was tied at 30 percent of passes being first-down throws in the second half of games, along with the Chargers and Raiders.
The teams worse than the Bucs were truly horrible, or they were teams with rotten quarterbacks or rotten coaches. The Belicheats were worse than the Bucs and they had a defensive meathead as an offensive coordinator.
What scares Joe is the Bucs were this bad with Tom Brady. What will they be like without him?
Or, can this be all excused/blamed on former Bucs offensive coordinator SpongeBob?
1st downs per pass in the 2nd half of games last yr
42% – KC
41%
40%
39% – ATL, DET
38% – CIN, NO
37% – SEA
36% – MIA, BUF, JAX, SF, DAL
35% – PHI, MIN, WAS, LAR
34% – CLE
33% – NYG, PIT, CAR
32% – BAL, IND, GB
31% – NYJ, TEN
30% – LAC, LV, TB
29% – HOU, NE, ARI
28% – CHI, DEN— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) May 28, 2023
May 29th, 2023 at 12:24 am
Joe what are your thoughts on Brady being the likely QB for the Raiders now
May 29th, 2023 at 12:30 am
Joe, Yes Leftwich’s absence will make a positive difference. Derek: A person cannot play for a tem and be part owner at the same time
May 29th, 2023 at 12:45 am
All the above.
May 29th, 2023 at 1:31 am
It’s almost like as Arians became less and less involved, and Leftwich took more and more control, things got worse and worse.
May 29th, 2023 at 1:34 am
@Derek Brady isn’t the “likely” QB for Raiders. It’s more likely that Kyle Trask is the new QB for the Raiders than Brady. For Brady to be the likely QB for the Raiders, all 32 NFL owners would have to lose their minds and say “Yes, please, lets set a precedent where we’re allowed to give players part ownership of our teams”
May 29th, 2023 at 1:41 am
Why does Brady get all of the credit when the Bucs win, but none of the blame when the Bucs lose? He was distracted. He wasn’t focused on football. He played scared. He was inconsistent. It’s not all on him, but he’s the key to the team scoring points. They didn’t. He wasn’t the GOAT last year. Not even close.
May 29th, 2023 at 5:47 am
It’s been documented that Brady was changing the game plan the day before the game and Joe won’t even acknowledge it. Now if the offense was doing good then Joe and some of yall will be saying the offense was good because of Brady changing the game plan.
May 29th, 2023 at 6:09 am
Make no mistake Leftwich was a horrible play caller. But this offense included
plays that Brady wanted to run and he relied too heavily on Fournette and White in the
passing game. Teams were more than willing to let Lenny and White catch the ball. YAC yards aside Lenny only contributed 26 first downs of his 73 receptions. White had only 13 first downs of 50 receptions. Together they only accounted for about 25%
first downs of the 123 balls their thrown way.
May 29th, 2023 at 6:12 am
Oneilbuc, who documented it and where is the documentation. I’d like to see it.
May 29th, 2023 at 6:26 am
Hmmmm….and where exactly is SpongeBob employed right now?
May 29th, 2023 at 7:50 am
Yes.
All of the above.
The fact that the Bucs were not last on the list may be more surprising.
The threat of a run was absent and Brady was never able to generate easy first downs with his feet. This limited non-pass options for moving the ball.
Things definitely seemed to be getting worse as the season progressed as well.
May 29th, 2023 at 7:55 am
Is Leftwich now living in Lovie’s basement?
May 29th, 2023 at 7:59 am
There’s so much missing in this piece Joe that I’m not sure what you’re driving at with the title ‘Bucs Struggled Terribly Passing For First Downs Last Year In Second Half’.
o Does that include BOTH 3rd down & 4th down attempts last year? Bucs converted on 37.4% of their 3rd down attempts (92 of 246 … ranking #21), but converted on 55.6% of their 4th down attempts (15 of 27 … ranking #7).
o What was the average distance to go for a 1st down? Bucs faced a LOT of 3rd-and-long situations last year, making it almost a certainty that they’d pass. Hard to CONSISTENTLY pick up 3rd-and-longs as we’ve seen.
Bucs made a TOTAL of 346 first downs last year (240 passing, 70 rushing, 27 by penalties). Take out the 1st downs by penalties and we got only 283 by passing & rushing the ball in 17 games. Of those, 107 came on 3rd & 4th downs, meaning that we got 176 of our 1st downs on 1st & 2nd down passing or rushing plays.
The year prior (2021) we got 265 of our 1st downs on 1st & 2nd down passing or rushing plays. That’s a very sizable difference. Personally I think that’s the biggest factor … our offense wasn’t really productive on ANY down, not just 3rd downs.
May 29th, 2023 at 8:05 am
You’d watch the all-22 replays….NO one was getting open. (Unimaginative routes? Dunno) They already knew we weren’t a threat to run the ball, Brady sure wasn’t gonna run the ball, so they brought up the safeties and played press coverage, ALSO knowing Brady would be on his back of the ball wasn’t out in 3 seconds. That spells doom
May 29th, 2023 at 8:22 am
I sure love the comment section in here these days.
Blaming Brady for the bad season last year and talking about how Mayfield with his shot arm is going to get us a reasonably okay season.
May 29th, 2023 at 8:28 am
Everything starts with the O line and QB. Our O line was awful. Losing both guards and center, then playing guys of position. Those guys couldn’t get ANY push to run the balland we’re on their heels all season. Brady was awful. Not even close to a GOAT performance. Don’t care the reasons, he was awful. We had one WR – Mike. Godwin fought his a$$ off but was still coming off a torn ACL and just wasn’t the same. Gage was a bust. And Otton developed nicely but was still a rookie. And without BA, Leftwhich was just horrible.
May 29th, 2023 at 9:41 am
Well, when you finally wrap your head around the fact that Brady was a big part of the problem, then you’ll understand.
Decimated offensive line, QB with one foot in the grave, and dunce at offensive coordinator. What could go wrong?
May 29th, 2023 at 10:14 am
One of the things this article is missing is the question of “How many times did the bucs make a first down only to have it brought back because of offensive line holding penalty”?
May 29th, 2023 at 10:38 am
When you “just do what you do”, sometimes that just sucks, and you need to change “What you DO” I am not convinced that Leftwich could make any changes needed. It is one of my hopes that our new OC can make changes as the game goes forward, and not have to wait until the next game to make any game plan changes. And then still 1st-10 up the gut, yeat again…
GO!!!!!BUCS!!!!!
May 29th, 2023 at 10:38 am
It will be addition by subtraction. Brady didnt want to hold onto the ball longer than 2 seconds, and Lefty was still convinced he had the GOAT in his prime. Not sure how the offense will look with Traskerfield, but the bar was set really low last season. Converting points in the red zone was a big problem, and it felt like the team had fared particularly unlucky. Ultimately, the offense looked clunky and inconsistent all season. Could a 45 year old man, and an OC no longer in the league have created such a bad situation? Maybe.
May 29th, 2023 at 10:49 am
You’ve got the wrong guy pictured but hey, we’ve seen this narrative for a while now.
May 29th, 2023 at 1:50 pm
I think the Joe’s have the right guy pictured.
May 29th, 2023 at 2:03 pm
Joe you had 3 years of Brady articles enough is enough. Brady should of been with the Dolphins last year not Bucs. Brady didnt want to play for Bucs last season. This was before his divorce then when that happened he checked out. Brady fans are onto the Las Vegas Raiders. Brady is a mercenary for hire
May 29th, 2023 at 3:08 pm
O. Line. Was. Garbage. No. Time. To. Throw. Zero. Run. Threat.
May 29th, 2023 at 3:30 pm
Look, we can analyze last year’s poor performance till the angle of the dangle equals the mass of the assininity. Crunch all the mumbo-jumbo down a little further till they collapse into a singularity and you will find that the whole team was a bunch of old, slow check-cashers led by incompetent coaches.
I see signs of improvement for this year that don’t require Steven Hawking to explain.
We’ve gotten younger, faster, and more athletic, and a thing that has no math at all…we’ve gotten hungrier.
Traskfield wants to prove they belong in the NFL. We’ve drafted a few athletic freaks who just happen to really love football. We’ve signed a bright eyed and bushy tailed new OC who would love to prove himself. We got some new and, hopefully, improved position coaches. Yeah, a lot has to go right for us to succeed. 31 other teams are singing that same song.
May 29th, 2023 at 4:56 pm
Suffering. It was actually on here when they ask Brady about changing the game plan and he never denied it.
May 29th, 2023 at 5:17 pm
“Rod Munch Says:
May 29th, 2023 at 1:31 am
It’s almost like as Arians became less and less involved, and Leftwich took more and more control, things got worse and worse.”
NO. Not “almost like”, it’s EXACTLY like that. From the moment BA stepped down, this team overall, and the offense in particular, regressed, and by a LOT.
BL was the one who was in over his head the worst, but it was obvious, even to the casual fan, that last year’s team was a full-on pretender.
Bring on the coaching changes, I say; any Bucs fan will understand (all too well) that coaching truly matters, and our new OC, while unproven, is at least able to articulate what he’s trying to do, and not speak to other adults as though they were children who simply wouldn’t understand.🙄
“If you can’t explain something to a first-year student, then you haven’t really understood.” –Richard P. Feynman
May 29th, 2023 at 5:37 pm
Bye 👋 Ron limpwrist called terrible game plans. I was shocked Brady didn’t just say F this on the field and then off the mic on his helmet and avoid Bye Ron for a half. It was like watching people get paper cuts out there.
May 29th, 2023 at 9:20 pm
I’m not worried about last year’s stats. This is a new year, new system, new start, new enthusiasm. This isn’t Brady’s team now, and that’s a good thing. The slate is clean. The youth will have a chance to develop.
May 29th, 2023 at 9:31 pm
It’s tough to make first downs when the sackless QB won’t throw the ball over the line of scrimmage.
May 30th, 2023 at 8:18 am
Drunk. Brady did say F that he actually changed the game plan the day before every game. But I get it no one once to blame Brady for nothing lol 🤣🤣🤣 only when the team wins it’s all Brady lol 🤣🤣🤣.
May 30th, 2023 at 10:35 am
Has Leftwich found a pop Warner team to coach yet? I’m sure someone could use him.