One confusing defense and delicious Thanksgiving picks
Making sense of Tampa Bay's defense, a T-day game for everyone, and another week of the NFL throwing aside player safety
What the hell is the Buccaneers defense?
Or, how you don’t need to throw deep balls to light up Tampa Bay
At the season’s halfway mark, Tampa Bay had changed the narrative around its championship hopes. The Buccaneers didn’t need 2007 Tom Brady to make it to a Super Bowl. If he struggled they could fall back on an elite defense to contend.
That group, after all, had put the first blemish on Green Bay’s record by reducing Aaron Rodgers to a shell of himself. They held five different teams to fewer than 280 yards in their first 10 games. They forced more turnovers than all but one other team in the NFL. They had, coming into Week 11, Football Outsiders’ top-ranked defense.
Then this happened:
Brady played like a 43-year-old and his defense was unable to bail him out against a powerful, but inconsistent offense. A Rams team that got outgained by the Giants in Week 4 (THE GIANTS) made Tampa’s typically efficient defense look unorganized and unprepared. Coverage lapses led to tackling breakdowns, allowing a low-risk passing strategy to run up nearly 400 yards of offense in a 27-24 road win.
This is a problem in Week 11. Will it be a fatal flaw come playoff time?
Here’s how the Buccaneer defense broke down on Monday night
The Rams made their gameplan clear from the start. They were going to feed Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp, running game be damned. Head coach Sean McVay, still in the process of rebuilding Jared Goff to his early-2018 form, devised a plan that asked his quarterback to rarely stretch the field; LA threw only three passes that traveled more than 15 yards downfield in 51 dropbacks. All the Bucs had to do was stop that dynamic WR duo in the short and intermediate range to hatch a primetime win.
They did not stop that dynamic WR duo.
Kupp and Woods combined for 23 catches on 28 targets — an absurd 82 percent catch rate that’s better than either had averaged through their first nine games. They totalled 175 yards while taking up 42 percent of the Rams’ offensive snaps. Los Angeles averaged 6.3 yards per play when those two got targets and 5.4 when they didn’t.
Things got worse when Tampa needed stops to get its offense back on the field. The Rams converted eight of their 11 attempts when passing on third down. Eight of those attempts came via targets to the team’s top two wideouts. When McVay needed a big play, he let Goff rely on his star players. It was a simple strategy. It was a very effective strategy.
That group didn’t just struggle in coverage. They also had problems stopping the ball after the catch, as both Kupp and Woods shredded the Bucs with major yards-after-catch gains:
The winding green snakes in those charts are what Kupp and Woods did after hauling in passes. Between them they covered more than 100 yards of field position after the catch.
That ineffectiveness wasn’t lost on head coach Bruce Arians.
Tampa did pick Goff off twice. One was a blanked double-coverage over the middle and a proper play from Jordan Whitehead. The other happened when Goff brain-farted his way through a cluster of a screen pass for the fourth interception of Jason Pierre-Paul’s 11-year NFL career.
That’s not nothing, but it wasn’t enough to do anything but reinforce the idea a smart game-managing QB can find success against this team.
Goff had just his second three-touchdown game of the season in Florida Monday night, but it would be inaccurate to put all this blame on the secondary. McVay’s short-range passing game helped expedite the ball out of the pocket for an offensive line playing without left tackle Andrew Whitworth, who will miss the rest of the season due to a knee injury. That’s how a pass rush featuring veterans like Shaq Barrett, Ndamukong Suh, Devin White, and Pierre-Paul managed zero sacks and only three quarterback hits over the course of the night.
This is all troubling! While the Bucs have been able to stop deep ball aficionados like Rodgers and Justin Herbert, teams who’ve maintained a lower-impact passing game have found ways to befuddle them. Drew Brees averaged just 4.8 intended air yards per pass in a pair of wins over Tampa. Nick Foles’ average completion made it only 5.1 yards past the line of scrimmage in the Bears’ Week 6 win. This is a defense that can be sliced to death with 1,000 cuts.
Fortunately, they’ve got some time to correct these-
Oh no, the Chiefs are next up on the schedule
Well, shit.
I cannot think of a worse situation to throw a talented, but easily derailed, passing defense into than a game against Patrick Mahomes. The good news is the Chiefs *probably* won’t replicate the short-pass spam work of the Rams and Saints before them. The bad news is there may not be a receiver group more likely to exploit bad tackling than Kansas City’s. Seven different players on that roster average at least seven yards gained after a catch (and that excludes Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, and Demarcus Robinson). For comparison, zero Buccaneers can say the same.
The Buccaneers have the secondary talent to erase opponents’ deep plays. Jamel Dean (who missed a chunk of Monday’s game due to concussion concerns), Carlton Davis, Sean Murphy-Bunting, and Antoine Winfield Jr. make up one of the game’s top young defensive back groups. Their 10.1 yards allowed per catch is the second-lowest mark in the league (behind, coincidentally, the Rams).
Mahomes won’t have to dial up any big-armed wizardry to top them. He can afford to make conservative throws in the pocket and allow players like Mecole Hardman and Clyde Edwards-Helaire to feast in the space and shoddy tackling created by the Bucs’ deep safety coverage. Tampa Bay’s weakness isn’t a quarterback like Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers; it’s one like Jared Goff or Drew Brees.
That’s a weird problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless. — CD
A Thanksgiving game for everyone
Last year for Thanksgiving week, I went back home to visit my mom and stepdad. I had to work on Thursday, but we still got to celebrate the holiday with some good food that I didn’t have to cook. On Friday, we saw a movie in the theater (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). On Saturday, we watched the Ohio State-Michigan game.
This year’s Thanksgiving will be … pretty much the exact opposite of that (though I have no problem doing my part to keep myself, my loved ones, and complete strangers safe). But there is one thing that remains constant, for better or worse: the NFL on Thanksgiving.
This year’s lineup features a game for everyone, no matter how you’re spending your hopefully small, socially distanced, mask-wearing, outdoors if possible Thanksgiving.
If you’re celebrating an unconventional Thanksgiving: Texans vs. Lions
This isn’t a normal year, so why treat it as such? If you want to ditch the turkey and mashed potatoes for, say, pancakes and tamales, then no one can stop you. Whatever eclectic menu you put together will pair nicely with this NFC North vs. AFC South affair.
Every Thanksgiving, the NFL throws one random matchup on the schedule and this year, it’s the first game of the day. There’s hardly any history between these two teams; they’ve only met four times previously, all during election years.
One of them — a 34-31 overtime win for Houston in 2012 — came on Thanksgiving, the first and so far only time the Texans have played on the holiday. It was particularly memorable, too, complete with a Ndamukong Suh groin kick and a mistake so egregious it birthed the “Jim Schwartz rule.”
Nothing about this year’s game suggests it’ll match the drama of eight years ago. Both teams are under .500, barely hanging on to any faint playoff hopes. Their defenses are more embarrassing than they have any right to be. The Texans have an interim coach and no GM; the Lions are practically in the same situation, because Matt Patricia and Bob Quinn surely won’t be around for much longer in Detroit.
However, you should never count out the Lions’ knack for hijinks (the kind that’s often painful for their fans). On the other sideline, there’s Deshaun Watson, who is always capable of putting on a show, especially when he’s in the midst of his most statistically impressive season yet.
It may not be the game we’re looking forward to most, but don’t be surprised if it’s the most entertaining of the bunch.
If you’re celebrating a traditional Thanksgiving: Washington vs. Cowboys
If you’re sticking with your usual Thanksgiving feast this year for some degree of normality, then this game between two historic rivals is for you. What’s more of a time-honored tradition than a nationally televised NFC East matchup that we will immediately regret watching?
The Cowboys, like the Lions, are an NFL Thanksgiving mainstay, and their most frequent opponent on the holiday has been Washington. This will be their 10th Turkey Day meeting, their last one coming just two years ago.
In 2018, the Cowboys’ 31-23 win pulled them into a tie with Washington for the top spot in the NFC East (they would later go on to claim the division outright). This year, whoever wins will sit alone in first place, at least until Sunday, because as a reminder:
Those standings reflect what a closely contested, yet bumbling mess the NFC East is, like a third-grade basketball game where at least two different players score at the wrong basket.
At some point, probably more than once, this game will make you sick to your stomach, so please, hold off on that second helping of pumpkin pie until later in the evening.
If you’re celebrating a very 2020 Thanksgiving: Ravens vs. Steelers
Are you uneasy about spending Thanksgiving with a relative who you’re worried doesn’t take proper Covid precautions? Did you decide to cancel, or at least move the gathering outdoors? That’s basically Ravens-Steelers, a divisional clash that had been scheduled for the primetime slot but will now be played on Sunday:
The Ravens need a win in the worst way in what has quietly devolved into a disappointing season. They’ve dropped three of their last four, including a 28-24 loss to the Steelers in Week 8, and are currently sitting outside of the playoff picture. Nothing could provide them with a bigger boost than knocking off the undefeated Steelers.
But they’re also down their top two running backs, among others, due to positive coronavirus results, and it’s safer for everyone that NFL has rescheduled, despite complaints from the Steelers:
We all have sacrifices to make this holiday season, JuJu. We won’t be able to enjoy the normally competitive and compelling rivalry, or the turkey leg for the winner after, but it’s better than letting the show go on as is, leaving us all feeling disquieted.
That’s 2020, in a nutshell. — SH
Thanksgiving picks
Up until Wednesday afternoon, the NFL was planning to go forward with the Thursday night game between the Ravens and Steelers, despite the fact that there are 10 Baltimore players who have tested positive for COVID. Since Monday. I’m no immunologist, but that sure looks like an outbreak to me. The solution to this certainly wasn’t for the Ravens to fly out Thursday morning for the game that evening.
That would’ve been the league’s most irresponsible handling of the pandemic yet. It’d only be a few steps below sunshine injections as a cure, player safety be damned. As one Ravens defensive lineman put it:
Incredible.
Here are the picks for Thursday’s games from our crew. Please welcome this week’s guest, Dan Kadar. I’ve known Dan since way, way back when we were un- and low-paid SB Nation team bloggers, back in the late 2000s. He ran Mocking the Draft for many years, another incredibly talented writer and whip smart football analyst who the company failed to take care of the way they should have (that’s my opinion, anyway).
Anyway, on with the picks!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And stay safe. — RVB