Albert Hanesworth was lone bright spot on the defense. Figure that!Give the head coach credit, he threw not one player under the bus, and trust me that was a herculean effort, because alot of players deserve to have some greyhound imprints on their uniforms this morning. Unlike the previous regime, you didn’t hear a lot of rhetoric; Raheem Morris took the blame “squarely on my shoulders”, or was it a load of nonsense?
We’re going to find out next week in Green Bay, where the Bucs will take on the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, who play tonight against Minnesota, and could be undefeated next week when the 4-5 Bucs take them on. No one except myself expects the Bucs to win there (and the players of course, they always feel they can win) and the only reason I do is because of the whacky way the NFL tends to provide those Daniel and the Lion matchups that favor the huge underdog; see Rams upset of New Orleans a few weeks ago.
Other than that one little iota of a prayer I’m offering, a win next week is highly unlikely, but that doesn’t mean the team doesnt have to show up. In fact, now that Morris has come out and accepted blame for the loss (which by the way, was not his fault- see below), the only scenario that will save face will be the outcome that shows the Bucs playing a hard fought close contest where the Bucs look like the Bucs of old.
And I dont the mean the Bucs of OLD Old, because 1986-1994 is exactly what that team looked like yesterday.
To be fair, Morris is not the culprit. Perhaps this Bucs team is underachieving for reasons Morris is fully aware he has done incorrectly. But ask yourself this important question; did you see Raheem Morris run into another defender to allow a Texan to score on a long bomb on the first play of the game? That was Jim Bates-esque if anything ever was. Correct that, it was more Jim Stanley or Fred Bruney!! Oh you never heard of those guys? Why would you hear of a defensive coordinator whose defense is ranked in the bottom 5 each year.
No, the problem was the Houston Texans realized the Bucs strength on defense was now its defensive line. They didn’t buy into the Albert Hanesworth is washed up talk (He had more tackles yesterday than he did all year with New England) and they knew the Bucs were going to respect the run, so they open with a play action fake like you’ve never seen, and the result was a touchdown on the very first play. Houston also took advantage of our biggest weakness on defense, linebacker. Geno Hayes and Quincy Black are not NFL calibur linebackers. I’m sorry guys- we know in Tampa Bay what linebackers are- we’ve had a million of them. Even in the dark days, we had Winston Moss, Scot Brantley, Chris Washington, Eugene Marve, Kevin Murphy, Broderick Thomas, Jimmy Williams, and Lonnie Marts well before Hardy Nickerson, Derrick Brooks and Shelton Quarles arrived.
Then you have the 50/50 club, the secondary, who seem to take half the plays off, and always the most critical ones. On Arian Foster’s receiving Touchdown, Aqib Talib completely whiffed at his man. Just like Tanard Jackson whiffed on Jacoby Jones first play of the game touchdown that could have downed the ball at the 45 instead of a touchdown. After Talib’s psudo tackle, Sean Jones and Tanard Jackson had their man hemmed in, but he put on a simple 8th grade juke move and scored. If Jones is so inept at tackling, replace him.
If Talib cant catch an interception to give the Bucs momentum (and I dont want to hear about the bad call on the ref, MAKE THE CATCH, then there is no review) then replace him too. It’s nice that Raheem Morris has the courage to take responsibility for the loss, but the problem is, what happens if they stink the place up in Green Bay? We wont be able to blame it on Raheem at that point, the people responsible for putting these players in positions to do damage will be. And they may have a long offseason to think about their errors.
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