Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 3 Big takeaways from win vs. Eagles in Week 2
By Nick Sparrow
2. The Tampa Defense Needs Serious Work
While the Buccaneers offense may look like an elite NFL unit, their defensive performance through the first two games leaves a lot to be desired. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise as they allowed the ninth most points and most yards per play in 2017, but it is clear that their defense simply has not made the same strides during the offseason as the offense has.
Tampa Bay allowed 8.1 yards per play in their first game of the season, the second worst among NFL teams. The only good news for the Bucs was the Saints were the only team worse, allowing 8.4 yards per play to the Tampa Bay offense. Still, there is no excuse for a team to allow eight-tenths of a first down on each offensive play, especially against a team within your division that you should be more than familiar with by this point.
In Week 2, Tampa was allowing 5.7 yards per game to Nick Foles and the Eagles. In the end, the Eagles scored 21 points and gained 412 yards offensively. While these stats are certainly better than the 40 points and 475 yards surrendered in Week 1 it should still be disconcerting to fans that despite spectacular offensive performances in both games, the Bucs have still only ended up winning by a single score.
It is impossible to know if Tampa’s offense is going to continue to look this good throughout the season but either way, they need just a little help from a defense that believed to be a significantly improved unit during the offseason. No matter what the Bucs record is at the end of the season, if this defense doesn’t start improving week to week it is hard to imagine the organization deciding to bring back Mike Smith as the defensive coordinator.