Well, How Bad Was That?
The Buccaneers laid an egg in their preseason finale against the Jacksonville Jaguars losing 19-0. The Bucs didn’t have a great week for much of anything, especially the special teams.
Here are my special teams’ grades:
Kickoff Coverage: N/A
When you score zero points, you only get one opportunity to kick off!
That opportunity didn’t come until the start of the third quarter, and it wasn’t even kicked by the Bucs’ starting kicker. By that point, most of the players who are likely to make the Bucs’ 53-man roster were already finished for the night.
Unfortunately, the Bucs’ offense was so anemic that many of the players fighting for those final roster spots never got the opportunity to show what they could do on kickoff coverage.
Punt Coverage: D
Riley Dixon punted 10 times and averaged more than 50 yards per punt. The coverage in the first half was decent, but things fell apart in the second half.
The Jaguars returned a fourth-quarter punt 63 yards for a touchdown.
That’s something you never want to see at any point in a game, so you can only imagine how irate Danny Smith must have been watching that one.
Punt Returns: C
Most of the returns were handled by Kam Johnson.
The only questionable decision came when Johnson chose to field a punt at his own 2-yard line. It was difficult to tell whether the ball would have bounced out of bounds, but the better decision probably would have been to let it go.
Sometimes the best return is the one you don’t make.
Kickoff Returns: C
As with punt returns, there wasn’t much to evaluate here. Most of the Jaguars’ kickoffs went into the end zone for touchbacks.
There simply weren’t enough opportunities to make much of an impact.
Overall: D-
It’s unfortunate that the Bucs’ offense was so anemic because some of the players fighting for those final 5-6 roster spots could have really used the opportunity to make their case on special teams.
Instead, there wasn’t much of a chance to evaluate them.
Thank goodness preseason is over.
Now the Bucs have to determine their 53-man roster by Sunday.
Bring on the Bengals!
Greg has been nominated for “Best Columnist” in Creative Loafing’s Best of the Bay. If you would like to vote for me here is the link.
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