Buccaneers Complete Sweep of Panthers

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I truly believed in my heart this would be a close game, even though the Panthers are a worse team on paper. Well, the Buccaneers did manage to play up to potential and the Panthers looked like a team missing their top players on offense and defense. One of the most complete team performances since they played the Chargers.

To start with what little bad there was in this game, Tykee Smith had a low-key awful game. He looked like he didn’t even belong on the football field. Just constantly got burnt and let guys run past him or wasn’t playing the zone coverage correctly. I like him a lot, but this was just a bad day for him. The DBs as a whole weren’t great, but he stood out in particular.

Trey Palmer absolutely played himself off the team for next year. He is doing almost nothing on offense and now cannot play special teams. He had a couple good plays as punt returner, but then decided to not keep doing that. Instead of letting the ball bounce at the twenty or just fair catching it, he decided to catch the ball off a bounce and run it all the way backwards to the five. What a truly inspiring performance. This is on top of the brain dead mistakes he made as a punt returner against Dallas. And with his lack of offensive production, he basically provides nothing.

It surprisingly wasn’t all bad on ST. We saw what was easily the best punt of the year by Browning. I believe it went for over 40 yards and really flipped the field. In fact, I believe it was after the Trey Palmer boneheaded mistake. And the Bucs got their first special teams TD since 2012 off a blocked punt. It was kinda hard to figure this one out and the broadcast didn’t seem to mention it, but that seems to be the last time. Point is, it has probably been over a decade since this last happened, so good stuff. Not only that, but it was JTS on the block. One of the few good plays he has had.

The star of the show was easily Baker Mayfield. When you throw five TDs, it certainly is a good day. But it was more than that. Baker was making smart decisions with the football. Something that had been driving many fans and analysts insane was him holding on to the ball and taking bad sacks. This time, he was throwing the ball away or just checking it down. No dumb throws or holding on to the ball for too long. Just safe and efficient football. He also fed Mike Evans, which is good because the Panthers were starting a bunch of nobodies in the secondary. Hell, even Devin Culp and Payne Durham had solid games.

Bucky of course had a good game, nothing shocking there. He did manage to get over 1000 rushing yards, the first time that has happened for the Buccaneers since Doug Martin back in 2015. He also broke fifty more tackles in this game and just showed a lot of great vision as a rusher. It seems like Rachaad White has been firmly displaced as the RB1 on the team, and with the performance he had, not hard to wonder why. I was actually shocked how little touches he had this game.

The defense outside the first drive and the two minute drill was really good. They had Bryce Young under a lot of pressure and really kept them in check. The run game for the Panthers was essentially a joke. They had 39 yards and most of that came in garbage time. The offense as a whole barely had 200 yards, so it was a stifling performance. With that said, the two TD drives for the Panthers had a lot of terrible defense, a lot of that falling on the coverage called by Bowles.

Like I said at the start, this was a dominating win. It showed what the Buccaneers can do when they are consistent and playing up to potential. The real question is if this can be kept up when the playoffs roll around. They won’t exactly be facing the Panthers when January football comes into town.

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