Bucs tap into Tampa mojo
Even with Brady off his game, his team takes page from Rays, Bolts
For the second time in this young NFL season, we were promised a spectacular quarterback matchup.
For the second time, that matchup never materialized.
Defences, special teams and any manner of unusual gridiron occurrences can get in the way of such things, of course. But in a season in which highscoring games have been the rule, not the exception, one might expect when two highprofile signal-callers come together in a much-hyped contest the fireworks are sure to follow.
That didn’t happen, however, on “Monday Night Football” in late September when Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson, two of the finest young quarterbacks in football and the NFL’s most recent MVP winners, collided as part of a Kansas City-Baltimore contest. The Chiefs won fairly easily, 34-20, with Mahomes throwing four touchdown passes. Jackson threw for only 97 yards.
If it was a marquee quarterbacking matchup, it turned out to be rather one-sided.
In a featured contest late Sunday afternoon, it was time to highlight two of the game’s greybeards: 43-year-old Tom Brady, now of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and 36-year-old Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers. The storyline was superb, with Rodgers off to a brilliant start with the unbeaten Packers and Brady still finding his way with his new team, coming off a loss in which he appeared to lose track of downs late in the game.
Brady played down the embarrassing error, but no one else did. “I’m pretty sure my quarterback knows what fourth down is, you know?” said Green Bay running back Jamaal Williams. “Aaron Rodgers would never do that. Never.”
Given that and the inevitable comparisons between two of the best quarterbacks of the past 20 years, this game was naturally tightly focused on that matchup. “It’s the Tampa Bay Bradys against the Green Bay Rodgers,” joked Packers offensive lineman David Bakhtiari.
Again, just like the Mahomes-Jackson matchup, the head-tohead battle between Rodgers and Brady never emerged in a game that started very much in Green Bay’s favour, then flipped on its head, and in the end turned into a Tampa Bay rout, 38-10. The Bucs’ resounding victory, however, wasn’t really due to Brady’s wizardry, but rather the way in which Tampa’s defence turned a good start by Rodgers into a lousy day at the office.
Maybe it’s just the serious mojo all pro teams in Tampa seem to have these days, with the Lightning having won their second Stanley Cup and the Rays now in the World Series for the second time. But after spotting Rodgers and the Packers a 10-0 lead in a first quarter in which Brady was only on the field for five offensive plays, the Bucs defence put the squeeze on Rodgers.
First, defensive back Jamel Dean not only became the first NFL defender to intercept Rodgers this season, but returned it all the way for a touchdown.
On the next Green Bay possession, backup defensive back Mike Edwards also intercepted Rodgers and returned the ball inside the five-yard line. Tampa scored again to pull ahead 14-10.
If Rodgers was going to make the pre-game hype seem worthwhile, he needed to respond quickly. Instead, his line started to crumble and he couldn’t get the potent Green Bay offence rolling. Brady, meanwhile, started to find his rhythm. He took the Bucs on two scoring drives, first hitting rookie Tyler Johnson with a TD pass and then finding former New England teammate Rob Gronkowski for another major to put the Buccaneers ahead 28-10 on the shellshocked Packers. By late in the third quarter it was 38-10 on a hot, windy evening in Central Florida, and Brady had helped Tampa improve to 4-2 on the season.
It was hardly a spectacular show by either Hall of Famebound quarterback in their third career meeting. Combined, Brady and Rodgers completed 33 passes for 326 yards, the kind of stats you might expect one of them to compile on a good day. The Packers turned the ball over three times, including the two picks thrown by Rodgers, while the Buccaneers might have most resembled Brady’s former Patriots teams by playing with uncharacteristic discipline in not taking a single penalty in the game.
Despite an opening-game loss to New Orleans and last week’s defeat in Chicago, the Buccaneers seem to be gradually becoming a serious threat in the NFC with Brady at the helm after 20 seasons in Foxboro. His former team, by the way, slipped to 2-3 on Sunday.
In terms of the argument as to whether Brady is better than Rodgers or the other way around, this game didn’t really settle anything. But it did indicate that, as with Denver when the Broncos acquired an aging Peyton Manning, Tampa may have a sturdy enough team that it won’t need Brady to be the MVP-calibre player he was a decade ago for the Bucs to be a serious Super Bowl contender.
Green Bay, on the other hand, looked just awful on a day when Rodgers was ineffective, suggesting the Packers may not be competitive when Rodgers isn’t brilliant.
As far as high-octane NFL quarterbacking matchups, well, so far this season we’ve been disappointed. Maybe we won’t be when Brady takes on Mahomes in Tampa in Week 12. At some point, surely the hype will deliver the fireworks.