Buccaneers Need To Get Pass Happy and Use Their Tight Ends
The Atlanta Falcons have become a pass-first football team.
They are 5-0.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers THINK they want to be a run-first football team and they are 1-3.
Right now, today, the best performers on the Buccaneer offense are wide receivers Vincent Jackson and Mike Williams. You think Greg Schiano might wake up and realize that now that he’s had an entire off week to contemplate the excitement and points that his “watching-paint-dry” offense has produced?
It’s time for the Bucs to stop the nonsense, stop the insanity of trying to pound the football when they simply cannot pound it. All they’re doing is pounding their way to a higher draft pick in 2013 at this point.
It’s time to go Atlanta. Time to pass the football.
With that being said, it’s also time to adapt the Atlanta model and get the ball to the tight ends. You ask yourself why they bothered to sign Dallas Clark if all he’s going to do is catch a pass about as often as we get 50 degree weather in Tampa in September?
Josh Freeman needs a check-off man and it’s got to be Clark or sometimes Luke Stocker, really. Through those first four games, the Bucs have thrown to Stocker twice for six yards, one was actually a touchdown! Clark has caught nine passes for 81 yards and when you consider one went for 33, the other 10 amassed a total of 54 yards. Who’s that going to scare on the defensive side of the football? No need to game plan for Tampa’s tight ends, is there?
That’s got to change.
Atlanta tight end Tony Gonzalez has caught 39 passes in five games for 388 yards. Heck, his backup, Mike Palmer, is about like Stocker. He has two for seven yards. Still, that’s 395 yards of output compared to 94 for Tampa. How’s that for a difference? Granted, Tampa is a game shy of the five Atlanta has played but unless the Bucs start using Clark more effectively, why trot him out there?
Oh yes, he’s a great locker room guy, forgot about that. Too bad you can’t win games in the locker room.
The fact is now that Schiano and his staff had had time to examine what works and what doesn’t, maybe they’ll become total geniuses and know that this running mentality of theirs might just lead them to a six-win season, at best.
It’s time to throw the football.
