We all know that the leader of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did not live up to his lofty expectations last season. His performance was nothing to write home about, for sure. However, it was certainly not only Winston’s fault.
Chase Stuart, an analyst from Footballperspective.com, published a very interesting article about Winston yesterday, claiming that he was “probably the most underrated Quarterback in 2017” and that, based on pure statistics, Winston had a strong season last year. Stuart proves his point with third down stats, for instance. Did you know that Jameis Winston was the second most efficient Quarterbacks (among starters) last year on third down? He completed an impressive 48.5 % of his passes on this crucial down, second only to Carson Wentz with 49.2 %. To put these numbers into perspective, Tom Brady’s completion rate was 44.3 %.
Furthermore, according to Stuart, the Bucs terrible season was much more a product of a disastrous running game combined with bad special teams and one of the worst defenses in the NFL. Winston had two games last year with a passer rating of over 130. Usually, this is a recipe for success, as there were 33 games in which a Quarterback achieved this task and 28 of them won their game. That reflects a winning percentage of almost 85 %. Yet, the Buccaneers lost both of their games where Winston had this terrific passer rating.
These are just a few of the points that Stuart mentions. If you would like to read the whole article you can find it (HERE). It is definitely a very interesting read for fans of the Buccaneers and Jameis Winston.
With our defense and our running game ranking almost last in every major category, the only way for these units is up. The same goes for Tampa Bay’s special teams and kicking game. With pivotal changes in the mentioned areas, Winston will only improve, and so should the Buccaneers record at the end of 2018. I believe in our leader Jameis Winston to turn this franchise around in 2018… Do you?
