By: Jeremy T. Ballreich
September 15th at 1:00 pm, the Buccaneers came on the field playing complimentary football. Good Defensively, especially in the Red Zone stopping the Lions seven out of eight times. While I don’t usually call out coaching mistakes, because there hasn’t been a need to for two seasons running. Ben Johnson and Dan Campbell made a few to say the least.
The biggest miscue was sending the kicking team on the field while the offense was trying to execute a stop clock play with no timeouts to end the half. I commend head coach Dan Campbell for owning the responsibility of that blunder. It’s no wonder his assistant coaches and players want to play so hard for him. Accountability starts at the top.
I’m beginning to wonder if Ben Johnson is starting to get too cute with the whole offensive genius thing, similar to 2019 head coach Sean McVey did with in Los Angeles. Going away from what makes Goff successful as a QB. The run game helps to set up the bread and butter plays of this offense. Play action passes, which Goff the last three seasons with Detroit, he’s been in the top three statistically with that play calling. The Lions tried to pass a total of 56 times today. 55 with Goff, and the one fake punt with Jack Fox (which was successful BTW). While only running the ball 27 times. When it is a greater disparity of two to one pass to run plays. That is not conducive to winning football. This needs to be fixed with a top 3 rushing offense last season respectively.
Baker Mayfield scored the dagger by running it into the end zone to take the Buccaneers to a 20 -16 lead late.
My stars of the game:
Offense:
Amon-Ra St. Brown 11 catches for 119 yards and 10.8 yards per catch
Jameson Williams five cathes for 79 yards and 15.8 yards per catch
Jahmyr Gibbs with 13 carries 84 yards and 6.8 yards per carry
Defensively:
Aiden Hutchinson four total tackles 4.5 sacks in the game. The last Lions player with 4 sacks in a game was back in 1994!
Brian Branch with five total tackles and one interception.
Derrick Barnes with four total tackles and huge pass break up out of the defensive end position to get the ball back to the offense on the final drive.
Levi Onwuzurike gets an honorable mention for sharing in one of the Aiden Hutchinson sacks.
In summary, the Lions defense played their hearts out trying to will the offense to the win. But Ben Johnson and Jared Goff failed to execute it in the long run. Our beloved Detroit Lions came up short losing this one. But showed a lot of heart doing it.
Final score
Bucs 20
Lions 16
On to the next opponent!
#OnePride
#DefendTheDen
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