Bucs trying for too many changes, Tom Brady is overwhelmed
Updated Friday, December 11, 2020
If any football team ever needed a bye week, it’s the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They needed time to recover from three defeats in four weeks, their ongoing roster reconstruction and a deluge of media reports about quarterback Tom Brady and coach Bruce Arians not being on the same page. Some zingers by Arians had us wondering if they were even on the same side.
But perspective is needed here. First, those three losses were to division leaders, and two were by a field goal. The Buccaneers are not on a sinking ship. They’re 7-5, and Brady, the Greatest Of All Time, has thrown 28 touchdowns to 11 interceptions. They’re on course for their first postseason berth since 2007. And though home-field advantage is out of the question, Arians correctly points out that in a pandemic world of empty stadiums, “home field means nothing.”
Arians is also correct in saying their main problem is becoming familiar with each other. Brady is a precision passer. His 43-year-old arm is plenty strong, but his success is predicated on receivers doing what he wants and expects and an offensive line protecting him from assault. In New England he had a head coach, Bill Belichick, who provided stability rather than wholesale changes every year.
Arians is in just his second season at Tampa Bay. His offensive coordinator, Byron Leftwich, is in his second season of being a play-caller. The Tampa Bay Times could be right that Leftwich “may be a little over his skis.”
The newspaper reported that the Glazer family, which owns the team, was disappointed when Arians decided to let Leftwich run the offense, with the head coach becoming more of a grand overseer and clock manager.
Of course, this is Arians’ playbook. We still see him on the sidelines, frequently talking to Brady. And in postgame press conferences we hear him detailing Brady’s errors, such as throwing too soon and inaccurately, especially on the deep shots in this chuck-and-duck offense where the mantra is “No risk it, no biscuit.”
Brady loved the playbook at first glance. He liked the diversity, the all-distances approach that contrasted with Belichick’s obsession with avoiding turnovers.
When asked this week to describe the identity of his team, Arians said: “The identity is being able to do a lot of different things with a lot of different people.”
The main problem with Arians’ system is that it de-emphasizes the best part of Brady’s game: play-action, quick throws against a defense that’s expecting a running play. Brady is second in the NFL in yards per pass after run fakes. But the Bucs rank 15th in play-action pass attempts, even though Brady’s passer rating is 24 points higher when they do it. The team is ranked 21st in rushing, even with Ronald Jones averaging 5.1 yards per carry, with 5 touchdowns.
Rex Ryan, the former NFL coach, made a trenchant observation for ESPN’s Get Up: “Bruce Arians was a great football coach before he got caught up in ‘No risk it, no biscuit.’ He should try to put Tom Brady in the best possible situation: ‘Tom Brady, we’re running your offense.’”
Even the most casual of football fans have seen enough of Tom Brady over two decades to understand how he won six Super Bowls.
He has the experience, the memory and quickness of mind to carve up any defense as long as you let him have the knives and you stay the hell out of the kitchen.
Arians says Brady has the freedom to change plays in the huddle and at the line of scrimmage, but he’s missing an essential ingredient: running backs with hands. In New England he had James White and Rex Burkhead to catch screens and wheels out of the backfield. In Tampa, Jones and Leonard Fournette are ground machines – if Arians would use them properly instead of keeping them on the shelf. But under no scenarios are they optimal receivers, and Jones is especially weak at blitz protection.
Arians, for all his brilliant mentoring of Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Andrew Luck and Carson Palmer, never liked screen passes, which are the best deterrent to blitzing. Arians likes home runs and not much else. Could it be that difficult to find a third-down back?
Brady would have been better off persuading Arians to sign a pass-catching back instead of the very problematic, albeit supremely talented, wide receiver, Antonio Brown. The Bucs already had two Pro Bowl wide receivers in Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and a solid No. 3 in Scotty Miller.
Brown only crowds the picture. And clouds it. He hasn’t shown much burst at 32, averaging 8.4 yards for his 20 receptions in four games. Typically, Arians shaded Brady: “I think Antonio is doing a really good job. It’s just when he’s going deep, we’re not hitting him.”
Arians was on record saying he did not want Brown because of a history of inappropriate, if not criminal, off-field behavior. But Brown was smart enough to befriend the good-hearted Brady, who saw an opportunity for a rescue mission.
Brady probably thought he’d have more success with Brown supplanting Miller. The evidence indicates otherwise. Since Brown’s arrival Brady has 4 TDs, 4 picks and a 61.0 completion percentage.
The problem here is there’s too much going on. Perhaps the bye week has given the Buccaneers enough time to repair the ship before they face the improving Minnesota Vikings on Sunday afternoon. Clearly, the Bucs need to make changes. But not too many. At this point, they might do well to listen to a Steven Stills song from the 1970s: Love the One You’re With.
