Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Philadelphia Eagles
After Eagles’ QB Donovan McNabbs rib injury in their win over the Carolina Panthers in Week one, he returned to the lineup after sitting out 2 games and their bye in Week 4.
And the Eagles went immediatly for the big one, McNabb to Maclin for 51 yards and TD on only their 2nd play from scrimmage. Notable is that those 51 yards went all through the air, that is McNabb launched that pass around their own 44 yardline and Maclin hauled it in at the Bucs Goalline…
The Buccaneers, after this loss now 0-5, well their whole performance had one word written all over: inability! Out of 6 scoring opportunities they made 14 points. Twice they weren’t able to convert a 4th down – especially the 2nd time it was almost embarrassing: with only a few inches to go, they weren’t even able to get the center-quarterback exchange properly done. Josh Johnson fumbled the ball and was very, very lucky that the TD-Return of the Eagles was called back as the Referee judged his attempt to squeeze the ball to his hip while already kneeling on the ground with one hand as having enough control of the football to call him down, and the play dead. Well, actually it just postponed the Eagles TD… as they scored on their ensuing drive. Back to the inabilities of the Buccaneers: the other two times they failed to score Josh Johnson threw an interception in the redzone. But simply blaming the QB in this case would be to easy. The more the game went on the less the Buccaneers Offensive Line was able to keep the Eagles passrush out of Johnsons face. Not only that he got hurried and knocked down almost every pass play, no he had plenty of his passes tipped or blocked by the passrush, just because the Eagles defenders weren’t just closing in unusually quick but they also still were able to raise their hands as they rushed freely through the middle right into Johnson’s face. His last interception was just a result of that: trying to throw around the raised arms of the onrushing defender he was forced to put the ball too far in front of his receiver thus missing him and the ball travelled on right into the arms of the waiting cornerback.
But also the Buccaneers Defense was shredded into pieces… it seems that Monte Kiffin took all his playbooks along an nobody in the organization remembers his Tampa Cover 2 system. They were playing way to often man coverage underneath and with up to 4 defenders deep, and still since they couldn’t put any pressure whatsoever on McNabb, so he just had to wait until his receivers got open. This got especially visible on his second TD pass to Maclin, this time a 40 yard pass just past the defender covering Maclin, but he (the defender) never looked back to find the ball which he could have knocked down easily would he have looked for it in time. But so he just could have confirmed the clean catch of Maclin: “Yeah he got it nicely, I saw it from less than a yard away…”
So Tampa, if you want to win a game this year, you need more than one Kevin Winslow shining – not because of his 2 TD catches and his 100+ yards receiving, but his overall performance…
