I think Todd Bowles needs to mail the Buccaneers game ball to Matt Patricia. Without his defensive scheme, this team might not be advancing. He had one of the worst defenses since the Cowboys took the field yesterday. But Dave Canales did a really great job, especially in that first quarter.
It felt like everything was humming on offense for that first half. Just great passing plays that opened up the run game tremendously. It was exactly what we have been clamoring for all year. However, the way he did it was certainly different. They say that your enemy should never know what you are thinking. Well, Dave Canales took that to heart.
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Cade Otton was the leading receiver in the game and Otton was targeted ten times with 8 receptions. It was definitely an interesting gameplan. And if we lost, every pundit would be hammering this home as a complete failure to not get the playmakers involved. One of the things I found interesting was the amount of screens we ran. But the Eagles had such a horrid tackling effort all game that they kept working.
Part of the reason these unknown guys were targeted is that Mike Evans had a bad case of the dropsies. Evans dropped a beautiful deep ball that would’ve been a TD. Otton also dropped an easy TD that hit his hands. There were 6 drops in the first half and it allowed the Eagles to hang around for longer than they should’ve. Just sloppy mistakes by the offense that need to be cleaned up.
But I give most of the credit for this win on Todd Bowles and his defense. Yeah it was gashed a couple times by DeVonta Smith, but he made the Eagles elite o-line look silly. You would think they never saw a blitz in their life with how they reacted to Bowles’ gameplan. This is more Eagles analysis than Bucs, but they had absolutely no play to help them against the blitz. Truly amazing for the Buccaneers. This game was Bowles’ wet dream as he could blitz as much as he wanted and it worked. He was in his element.
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The tackling was some of the best of the season, especially juxtaposed to the Eagles awful secondary. Dean was absolutely blowing them up with 9 tackles and Lavonte David proved that he will never get old. But it was really the rookie show. Trey Palmer had one reception for 56 yards and a TD, which should’ve been for 6 yards if he didn’t break every tackle. Calijah Kancey looked like he was getting pressure every snap and recorded a sack. Yaya Diaby also had a solid game, albeit not amazing.
But, ladies and gentlemen, we have witnessed history. The Bucs managed to stop the tush push for the second time in the season. Because Vita Vea is a big boy and K.J. Britt can tackle. Just ignore the facemask. Zyon McCollum perfectly ran the “commit a stupid penalty to make the Eagles go for it and take points off the board” play.
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Were the Buccaneers perfect? Absolutely not. They couldn’t cover DeVonta Smith to save their lives and the offense was running plays that likely wouldn’t work on the Lions or better teams. But I am very very excited. This is a team that wanted to win. The coaches were very aggressive, especially Canales. If the Buccaneers defense can keep this up and the offense cleans up its mistakes, we can get even farther.
Make sure you check out Devin’s blog at cannoncrunch.wordpress.com.
Cannon Crunch with Devin Sanguinett
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