Studs and Duds from Tampa Bay’s loss to the Detroit Lions
Sometimes, a game will give you more studs than duds, and others, more duds than studs. We can definitely say that this game falls into the latter category.
The Bucs lost 20-6 to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, and although the team’s throwback uniforms looked good, that was about the only thing. Tampa Bay’s defense held up fine given the circumstances, but the offense turned in a dreadful performance that it will want to forget — and one that it may have to if it wants to be competitive with other teams this season.
Here are Bucs Wire’s studs and duds from Sunday’s throwback matchup:
Stud: Lavonte David
This was Lavonte David’s best game this year, and he was the engine through which a defense that did a (mostly) good job ran through.
David netted a sack and 12 combined tackles on Sunday, flying around just about everywhere. He also made one of the day’s best defensive plays, knocking the ball out from the hands of Sam LaPorta on a crucial third down that would give the Bucs the ball back. He’s up there in age, but make no mistake — David is still one of the game’s best linebackers.
Dud: Dave Canales
Playcalling for the dreadful offense on Sunday was a major regression, and it was definitively Dave Canales’ worst game so far.
The Bucs want to be a balanced team in run and pass, but with how bad the run game is, those run plays end up being wasted. Canales called quite a few of those plays at very inopportune times, and he also failed to get good passing schemes going on first and second down with a strange mix of screens and deep shots. There were other problems with the offense, but the poor playcalling was one of the bigger glaring problems.
Stud: Chris Godwin
Sure, a good amount of his yards came at the end of the game, but Godwin remains one of Tampa Bay’s foremost third-down converters. He had two such catches on Sunday, and he caught six of his seven targes for 77 yards. He’s been reliable all year, and despite the putrid offense, he remained reliable on Sunday.
Dud: Mike Evans
This was a game to forget for Mike Evans.
He had a bad drop early in the game on third down, and that set the tone for the rest of the game. He also had an offensive pass interference penalty that pushed the team back on a third and short, and Baker Mayfield’s double pump that ended up in a pick partially occurred because he wasn’t looking when Baker went to throw it the first time. Overall, this was one of Evans’ worst games, as he didn’t deliver across the 10 total targets he got.
Stud: Jake Camarda
Yeah, it’s a rough edition of Studs and Duds, folks.
Camarda had perhaps one of the better coffin corner punts in some time (only for the Lions to have a similar one later in the game), and he also kept his punts inside the 20 on three different occasions. He punted too much (six times, but who’s counting?) but his average of 54.2 yards per punt was overall pretty decent on Sunday.
Dud: The entire run game
And here we are, at the root of the problem.
I know I’ve done this a lot recently, but I can’t pick one player that makes this run game bad. Tampa Bay averaged 2.9 yards per carry on the ground, and it isn’t just the work on one back like Rachaad White, who had 26 yards on seven attempts, that makes it so poor. The interior offensive line is awful at run blocking, so it feels futile to even try to evaluate the running backs — they either get hit immediately at the line or they get swarmed on first push. However you spin it, this is the Achilles heel for Tampa Bay’s offense and its a big reason why it doesn’t show up in big games.
