There’re serious problems down in Tampa. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their offense has floundered ONCE AGAIN as they lost to the horrific Carolina Panthers 21-3.
I can’t believe that I’m even saying this, but there’s a huge possibility that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers miss the playoffs. Let me repeat that: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers might miss the playoffs. That’s how bad Tom Brady and this Tampa Bay offense has been this season.
I mentioned this fact a few days ago while talking about how dysfunctional Tom Brady has become in this Tampa team, but this game has just reinforced my view about Tom Brady. He needs to get his head in the game (so to speak) or just retire and let the Bucs figure things out without him.
Aside from the Week 4 Chiefs game, he’s been awful every time he’s taken the field.
In fact, he wasn’t even that good in that Chiefs game either as he was forced to throw the ball 52 times as his Bucs went down early and stayed behind all game long in route to a 41-31 loss. And this game was no different.
Brady ended today going 32/49, 290 yards, 0 TD, and 0 INT as the Bucs offense had just 17 First Downs and went 2/12 on 3rd Down, which are truly awful stats. Sure, Brady had a decent amount of passing yards and his 65% completion percentage on nearly 50 attempts is quite good, but these stats sour quickly when you realize that the Tampa offense only ran the ball 16 times for 46 yards.
So, in other words, the whole offense today evolved around the arm of Tom Brady, which only resulted in a measly total of 3 points. Pretty pathetic.
And do you want to know what else was pathetic today? The Tampa Bay receiving core.
How many passes did Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and Russell Gage drop today? 5? 6? Mike Evans dropped one of the most comical passes you’ll ever see as the ball bounced off his hands and bobbled in front of him like you’d see on Looney Tunes or something. What made that play even worse was that he was WIDE OPEN and had no one even in a 5-foot radius of him as he was running towards the endzone.
This Tampa Bay offense should be ashamed of themselves for how bad they’ve been playing.
Nonetheless, I should commend the Carolina Panthers. They’ve had a turbulent week with the firing of head coach Matt Rhule, the hiring of interim HC Steve Wilks the trade of franchise superstar RB Christian McCaffrey, and the general acceptance that this team is heading down a lengthy, long rebuilding process.
They could have easily of packed it in and let the Bucs run wild on them, but they didn’t. They showed some character and fight as they outplayed the NFC South division leaders in every area of the field.
But, if there was any part of the Panthers team that I would praise the most, it would have to be the running back core. In the wake of losing the best running back this franchise has probably ever seen, running backs D’Onta Foreman (15 CAR, 115 yards) and Chubba Hubbard (9 CAR, 63 yards) combined for 181 rushing yards against a Tampa Bay defense that boasts of players like Lavonta David, Devin White, Shaq Barrett, and Vita Vea.
It’s simply incredible how great this backfield played.
Nonetheless, this Tampa Bay loss still doesn’t affect their standing atop of the NFC South as the Atlanta Falcons also lost today to go 3-4, but it certainly makes this division a race to the bottom now. The Bucs are now 3-4, with the Falcons coming in just behind them at 3-4 too (they’re only behind TB on head-to-head matchups), the Panthers are now 2-5, and finally the Saints are also 2-5.
Some division, right?
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