The Buccaneers offense is predicated on downfield shots. Lots of risk-its, lots of biscuits. And yet, in the last few weeks, Tom Brady has resorted to safe Leonard Fournette checkdowns at an unusually high rate.

Before the bye week, the Bucs ranked 7th in the league with an 8.55 yard average depth of target (ADOT). Since the bye, they’ve plummeted to 24th with a 6.53 ADOT. This drop is even more stark when compared to the 2020 season, during which the Bucs led the NFL with an ADOT of 9.17.

But these are just basic stats that lack context. In trying to evaluate whether there’s been an actual issue with Brady’s play, it’s important to be precise with what questions are being asked. For instance, is the goal to evaluate whether Brady has failed to see open opportunities in the last three games – particularly against Washington and Indianapolis – or is the goal to predict future performance? One does not necessarily imply the other. Bayesian thinking — even in an approximated hand-wavy way — is helpful. 

First, you had to expect a drop-off in the Bucs’ ADOT from last season for two main reasons: the continued shift around the league to more two-high safety defenses, and the Bucs’ dominance against single-high defenses in 2020. That’s come to fruition. Opposing defenses have sold out to take away the deep ball — the Eagles and Giants being two of the more extreme examples. In fact, the only quarterback with more dropbacks against two-high defenses than Brady this season is Patrick Mahomes. This is a part of the reason Tampa Bay has become more efficient on the ground.

Another way that the Bucs have countered is with more screen passes. That has also decreased Brady’s ADOT. And with the addition of Giovani Bernard, plus Fournette’s improvement as a pass catcher, Brady trusts his backs with short, quick passes in important situations. 

Take this second-and-9 example from Week 5. With Cameron Brate in motion, Brady knew Fournette was one-on-one against linebacker Jerome Baker. Without hesitation, Brady fired to Fournette and let him work in space.

The running backs were one of the few weak areas in the Buccaneers’ pass game last season. That’s been much better in 2021. In addition to exploiting man-to-man mismatches, passes to the backs can attack underneath space against two-high zone defenses, too. 

It’s important to understand what quarterbacks are reading on a given play. They don’t see the entire field at once. Rather, they have a progression that dictates where they’re looking and when. The order of this progression can change based on leverage, number of deep safeties, man or zone, blitz, etc. Remember the Madden QB Vision Cone?

With some concepts, the quarterback is meant to read the entire field if necessary. That is, he’ll start on one side and work back to the other, often with backside receivers running into his line of vision. Other concepts are designed such that the quarterback can only read half the field, and it’s his responsibility to pick which side he’s going to read based on the pre-snap (or immediate post-snap) look. 

Brady had to pick a side against on this play. He identified soft coverage and decided to read the stick concept to the bottom of the screen. This was good process, but OJ Howard happened to get wide open against a blown coverage on the other side of the field. It would have been a terrible idea for Brady to turn down the open receiver — either pre-snap or post-snap — to look towards Howard in case the defense made a huge mistake. 

Against the Football Team, Brady tried to hit Bernard back shoulder. Meanwhile, two Washington defenders ran into each other on the opposite side, leaving Mike Evans wide open in the back of the end zone. Brady made a reasonable split decision under pressure. 

And last week against the Colts, Brady wanted to hit Brate on a glance route off of play action. But Brate got rerouted, and a defensive miscommunication left Evans wide open on the post-wheel combination. Again, it’s hard to put much blame on Brady for this one. The Bucs have had success with glance routes off of play action before, like when Brady threw a perfectly anticipated pass to Chris Godwin against the Bears. 

Brady and Brate even connected on a glance route for a crucial fourth quarter third-and-9 against the Patriots’ cover 0 blitz, albeit without play action. 

So clearly, someone being open where Brady isn’t looking isn’t necessarily evidence of Brady not seeing the field. We have to parse through plays to identify which ones are mistakes, and which ones are bad luck. 

However, there have been plays that are clear mistakes. 

This pass had to go to Godwin. Brady was too quick to hit Fournette when he was both horizontally and vertically capped by his defender. 

While the previous example could benefit from a very generous interpretation in which Fournette is actually the third read based on Brady’s footwork, which initially opens him towards Howard and Brate, no such interpretation exists for this play. Evans was the primary target on the design. Sure, there was a middle field safety. But he was too far off to make a play, and Evans bent his route away from the safety anyway. 

On the very next play, Brady was reading the play out to his left — away from Evans and Godwin. One possible explanation as to why is that, against two-high coverages, the quarterback will often hit the checkdown on four verticals concepts. Maybe this should be an argument to have the checkdown on Godwin and Evans’ side — you know, the two best weapons on the team — but that’s neither here nor there. Evans and Howard were both wide open in each seam. Regardless of which side Brady picked, he should have found an open receiver for a chunk gain. Evans hauled in a long touchdown on the next play, but that’s irrelevant to the evaluation of this one. 

This play was the most egregious to me. The Colts played cover 1 with a five-man rush on third-and-6. Brady had a great look on the left side, as the Indianapolis corners were playing tight coverage out of single-high against Tampa Bay’s Hoss concept. The ball has to go to Evans on his inside fade against these defenses. End of story. Instead, Brady turns down the look and moves to Fournette on his choice route. Had Brady thrown a more accurate pass, as he usually would, Fournette might’ve picked up the first down. Instead, he was tackled short of the sticks and the Bucs left an explosive play opportunity on the field. 

Here’s the same concept against the same coverage on third-and-4 in the NFC Championship Game.

Brady has irrefutably made mistakes over the last few weeks, and he didn’t play up to his MVP standards against the Football Team or the Colts. But it’s not as if he played poorly. There have been a few missed opportunities, and the ones against Washington were particularly amplified because the Bucs lost. But a handful of the perceived mistakes were more bad luck than bad process. And with the ones that were mistakes were, in my opinion, just variance. Not enough has occurred for me to reasonably change my expectations of his play moving forward. If he continues to play below his standards and make the same mistakes, especially if he makes them at a higher volume, I will reevaluate. 

Furthermore, he’s made excellent throws in all of these games. He’s not playing scared. 

The throw to Scotty Miller that drew a pass interference was insane. Brady read out the entire front side concept and then threw a late bomb to the backside no. 1. And he put it on the money. If Miller’s arm weren’t pulled at the 30-yard line, this is a touchdown. 

He made a similar throw against the Saints. 

Remember earlier in the Colts game when Brady didn’t see the open player on the post-wheel side? Byron Leftwich came back to it and his quarterback delivered a strike.

I do think the Bucs’ overall approach to middle of the field open coverages has been (at times) too conservative. That includes Bruce Arians, Leftwich and Brady. They have more efficient ways of beating two-high coverages than running the ball and wide receiver screens. Those are both parts of the solution. They are not the solution.

There are ways the Bucs can mitigate these mistakes, too. For one, they can manipulate alignments to create a higher target share for their best receivers, i.e. Evans, Godwin, and Rob Gronkowski. Leftwich can call more play action and full field reads. Brady can hit digs and inside fades when coverages tell him to hit digs and inside fades.

The mistakes happened to be clustered over a small sample that still included strong play. With consideration to the rest of his season, or rest of his career, Brady has earned strong priors. For now, I’m maintaining that this is a blip in a great season.