TAMPA, Fla. -- After two straight games of failing to score on the opening two possessions, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Dirk Koetter said his offense has to get off to a faster start this week.
“We can't wait for that third drive to make something happen,” Koetter said Sunday, a day after his Bucs beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 27-21 in the second preseason game. It was his first win as a head coach, but more concerning for him as a play-caller was his offense struggling.
“I think more than anything, we've got to get Jameis [Winston] off to a quicker start. He just started real slow last night,” Koetter said. “The very first play of the game we had Vince [Jackson] wide open and Jameis has got to make that throw in his sleep. We've got to start faster.”
Winston was 0-6 in the first quarter passing and failed to complete a single pass until the beginning of the second quarter.
On the first play of the game, lining up on the outside in a tight formation alongside Mike Evans, Jackson sold the nine route well, with cornerback Davon House continuing straight downfield as Jackson broke outside at 15 yards. Jackson dove for it, but it was a low pass and underthrown.
“On the first throw to V-Jax, [he was] wide open. I’ve just got to make the throw,” Winston said, putting the blame on himself for the team’s slow start. “I just missed throws.”
After a pitch to Charles Sims was driven back 6 yards by Jalen Ramsey, Winston found himself scrambling outside the pocket to buy time. He scrambled 10 yards, five shy of the first-down marker, but the Bucs were aided by an unnecessary roughness call on Telvin Smith.
They were again aided by a Jaguars’ penalty when Johnathan Cyprien was called for defensive pass interference, which inched them another 15 yards downfield.
On third-and-2, with the pocket collapsing quickly, Winston scrambled to the far sideline and attempted to find Mike Evans, who had run across the field out of a bunch formation to try and bail out his quarterback. Winston couldn’t slip the ball between Dwayne Gratz and Smith, who managed to get a hand on it. Roberto Aguayo then came onto the field and missed a 32-yard field goal attempt.
“Even though that was a sloppy start….we still had a chance to go down there and get three points,” Koetter said. “That was not a pretty drive and Jacksonville helped us with a couple penalties there. We're going to talk to guys about it. I don't think there's anything magic but we're going to work on it."
On the second offensive possession, on first-and-10 from the Tampa Bay 29, Winston faked a hand-off to Sims in the backfield and rolled to his right, and throwing on the run, attempted to hit Evans on the far sideline. Incomplete. Then, on first-and-10 from the 40, Winston tried to hit Evans again, who was manned up by Ramsey along the far sideline. Too high, even for a 6-foot-5 target.
He then attempted a quick 5-yard pass to a Cameron Brate in the flat, but Cyprien was all over it. On the very next play, he tried to find Brate again in the middle of the field and was intercepted, with the ball bouncing out of his hands and into the hands of Gratz.
It was the second straight week where the Bucs not only failed to score in the first two drives, but turned the ball over. Against the Philadelphia Eagles, Winston fumbled on the opening possession when he was sacked by Fletcher Cox.
Also like last week, the Bucs were able to score on the third possession of the game. The Bucs ran the ball 10 times on the 14-play drive and were aided by three penalties. Winston finally made the connection to Evans on fourth-and-2 on a slant route for 14 yards. On the very next play, off play-action, he checked down to Peyton Barber for 10 yards.
After a pass down the middle slipped through Brate’s hands in the end zone (Peyton Thompson was called for unnecessary roughness for slamming into the back of Brate’s head), Winston floated a 4-yard pass to Evans on a fade route, with Evans catching the ball against a leaping Nick Marshall in the corner of the end zone. It was something the two had worked on quite a bit.
While the touchdown was encouraging, especially given that Evans was targeted five times and managed two catches, and the team did have a 158-yard rushing performance without star running back Doug Martin, the mistakes on offense were glaring. Koetter didn’t have an immediate answer as to why.
“How are we going to fix it? If I knew that, it would be easy to do,” Koetter said. “I don't know that exactly. We've got to talk to them about it. We've got to emphasize it.”
Was Winston just simply out of rhythm? Is he trying to do too much, a common problem among young, highly successful quarterbacks coming out of college?
“I don't know about the rhythm part, but he wasn't as accurate as he needs to be,” Koetter said. “He missed a couple throws. The one to Vince, the fade ball down the sideline to Mike [Evans], those are throws that have to be better."
“You’ve got to remember, a year ago at this time, we were scared to death because Jameis was throwing three or four interceptions every day in practice and he’s definitely not doing that,” Koetter said, trying to put things into perspective. “Jameis, the competitive side of him, he sometimes tries to do too much.”
There was the scramble on third-and-15. “No matter how you slice it, he’s going to run for five yards, but he refuses to slide and lets the whole defense hit him,” Koetter said. “That’s just one example that you don’t have to win the game every single play.”
Winston’s slow starts not only go back to last year, but to college too. The first two completions he finally made Saturday were short passes -- a slant and a checkdown, and they came after eight run plays on that drive alone -- suggesting that perhaps giving Winston more manageable throws at the beginning of games may be the way to go for now.