Tampa Bay Buccaneers Loss To Dallas Was Totally Offensive
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers got beat 16-10 Sunday in Dallas.
The game was simply offensive. It was offensive to Buccaneer fans, it was offensive to the defensive unit that played its collective behinds off and it was offensive to imagine that Josh Freeman could play as bad as he played.
Even more offensive was Mike Sullivan’s play calling. That was really offensive by the man responsible for play selection.
On a day when the defense got the team started on the right foot, on a day when the defense pressured Tony Romo time and again, the offense chose not to show up until it was too late.
How bad was this offensive mess at Cowboys Stadium?
We’ll let former Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman, now the leading Fox analyst explain it:
“This is about as had of an offensive performance as I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Aikman said as the Buccaneers had less than 100 total yards with two minutes left in the game. Freeman then found Vincent Jackson for the first time all day with a 29-yarder, his longest completion of the game and there weren’t many completions at all. Freeman wound up his futile afternoon with 10 completions in 28 attempts for a whopping 110 yards, one touchdown, one interception that wasn’t his fault.
Offensive? Try only 166 yards total, 55 on the ground.
The defense rebounded like champs after last week’s pounding at the hands of Eli Manning. Aqib Talib started the day like a hero, he picked off Romo on the first Dallas series and that led to the only Buc touchdown, a one-yard toss from Freeman to Luke Stocker.
After that, it was the defense that kept the Buccaneers in the game, hounding Romo, sacking him three times, shutting down the Dallas ground attack and standing out on a day when the offense looked like it was sunk in quicksand.
Freeman is flat out of excuses. He’s started more than 40 games and all he needed to be in this contest was average. Average would have gotten the Bucs a win. Instead they come home 1-2 and there will be a lot of questions this week for Freeman and Sullivan.
There will also be more talk of how Greg Schiano ended this one as Dallas sought to run out the clock. Three times the Buc defenders pounded into the Dallas line as Romo took a knee, although they were prepared, after each plunge, the Bucs called time out so they could do it again.
On the third and final rip into the Dallas offensive line, backup center Ryan Cook got plastered. He could have been injured. It was not a pretty sight, considering the criticism thrown at Schiano when he did it against the Giants last week.
It was an ugly end to a very offensive game.
It might take a week to get the smell out of Cowboys Stadium.
