Tampa Bay still learning rules of road this season
TAMPA — OK, all you road scholars, why do the Bucs — who play this afternoon at Buffalo — keep falling behind in games not played at Raymond James Stadium?
A year ago, the Bucs were actually a pretty good road team, going 5-3. But slow starts have doomed them of late. In their past four road games dating to 2016, the Bucs have trailed by at least two scores at halftime in all of them: 17-3 at Dallas; 20-3 at New Orleans, 21-3 at Minnesota and 24-0 at Arizona.
And if there is one thing that will get you beat in the NFL, it’s getting down at least two scores early.
Over the past 10 years, NFL teams that lead by more than 10 points or more at the end of the first quarter have won about 86 percent of the time. Teams holding that margin through the second quarter won about 89 percent of the games.
When the lead was 14 points or more at the end of the first quarter, teams won 89.3 percent of their games, and 93.8 percent of the teams won when leading by the same margin after two quarters.
When trailing by three touchdowns or more, comebacks are next to impossible. Teams leading by 21 points or more at the end of the first quarter (96.6 percent) or the second quarter (97.1 percent) rarely lost.
“The lesson is we got to start faster,” coach Dirk Koetter said. “We’ve got to execute better early in games on offense. We’ve become this team that looks like gang busters in the fourth quarter but does not look like gang busters in the first quarter. It’s a four quarter game. We’ve got to start faster. Our defense normally hasn’t had as much of an issue, but (Sunday) we had that issue on defense as well. That’s something as a coaching staff we need to figure out.”
They had better figure it out in a hurry. Five of the Bucs’ next seven games are on the road. Nothing takes the air out of a team like falling behind on the road. Pretty soon, the game plan is abandoned. Teams will have no balance because they feel compelled to throw the football every down to get into the game.
The problem is, it hasn’t just been the offense that is letting the Bucs down. The defense played arguably its worst game since Koetter has been head coach last Sunday at Arizona.
“We took a hit early and we weren’t able to recover from it, so we sat down on our bench at halftime and the next round started and we recovered,” defensive coordinator Mike Smith said. “In this business, you can’t do that. You’ve got to make adjustments on the fly because you’re going to get hit. It’s like a boxing match. You’re going to get hit and when you get hit, you can’t wait to get to the corner. You’ve got to freaking recover. If not, you’re going to get knocked out and basically we about got knocked out.
“We’ve got to show the resolve and not panic.”