The death knell in the Bucs’ 20-6 loss at home to the Lions was the 45-yard bomb from Jared Goff to Jameson Williams late in the third quarter. Up until that point, the Bucs had kept the game a one-score affair and had just scored a field goal on an encouraging offensive drive. But on third-and-10 the Bucs allowed Williams to get behind the defense for a big score in a crucial moment of the game.

JAMESON WILLIAMS IS BACK 💣 pic.twitter.com/HpX9xa8Ek2

— PFF (@PFF) October 15, 2023

Immediately following that play X (formerly Twitter) ignited with blame for Bucs safety Ryan Neal. Neal was the defender actively in coverage at the time the ball was caught. Neal had a bad game overall. It would make sense that he would be the guy blamed for the touchdown.

But was he?

Watching live, I thought Neal did just about everything he could from my vantage point to try to disrupt the pass. I said so in the moment. Many were not having it.

But here’s the thing. It’s really hard to see, understand, and evaluate safety play from live television copy. But that’s why we have other ways of looking at the game. Now All-22 of the game won’t be available until tomorrow.

But we do have Next Generation Stats dots! So let’s take a look.

Jared Goff & Jameson Williams (45-yd TD)

🔹 Air Distance: 57.0 yards
🔹 Target Separation: 0.7 yards
🔹 Completion Probability: 26.2%

Williams has scored a deep TD on 2 of his 5 career receptions.#DETvsTB | #OnePride pic.twitter.com/hDum4I5fW8

— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) October 15, 2023

Now let’s put aside the 26.2% completion probability, which in and of itself shows Neal was in decent position and Williams made a heck of a catch and look at the play overall.

Dissecting The Bucs Defensive Call

Lions WR Jameson Williams and Bucs S Ryan Neal – Photo by: USA Today

Let’s start with what the defensive play call likely was. Based on the movement of the defenders it was most likely a variation of Cover 3 called “Cover 3 Sky.” The overarching design of “Cover 3 Sky” has both outside corners drop to deep outside zones. One of the safeties drops to the deep middle. That is the deep three zones that are referred to in by Cover 3.

The “Sky” is an alliteration for safety (both start with “S”) and says that the other safety is going to drop to cover one of the outside flats. That leaves two of the Mike, Will, and Sam backers (or slot corner if the defense is in nickel) to drop into hook curl underneath zones with the third of that group playing the opposite flat to the flat safety.

And you can see much of that happening in the dots. But there was a lot of disguise and a few changeups to the play called so as not to advertise it to the Lions offense. I’ll try and describe each of the variations deployed.

Instead of rushing the four traditional pass rushers (In this case outside linebackers Joe Tryon-Shoyinka and Shaq Barrett and defensive linemen Greg Gaines and Logan Hall – Nos. 9, 7, 96 and 90) the Bucs dropped Tryon-Shoyinka as a flat defender to the boundary and rushed clot corner Chris Izien (No. 29).

Instead of having Antoine Winfield Jr. (No. 31) who was lined up as the single-high safety drop to the deep third, the Bucs had him crash to the concept side flat as the “Sky” defender. This left Neal (No. 23) to bail hard at the snap to replace Winfield as the deep middle defender.

The goal of all of this non-traditional movement is two-fold.

No. 1, try to confuse the offensive line on their protection responsibilities to get a free rusher.

And No. 2, try to confuse Lions quarterback Jared Goff into throwing the ball into a bad spot to create a turnover. Neither of those things happened here.

The Lions Offensive Call

The Lions ran a “Flood” concept from a condensed trips bunch look. The goal was to flood the concept side of the play with receivers at multiple vertical landmarks. It simplifies the progression for Jared Goff so he only has to properly evaluate the vertical leverage of the defenders on that side of the field to get the ball to the best option.

Jameson Williams is the apex in the bunch (the top of the triangle) and he runs a deep corner route. Underneath him, Amon-Ra St. Brown (No. 14) runs an intermediate corner route from one and Josh Reynolds (No. 8) runs a shallow out from three.

Ryan Neal Was Left In A Compromised Position

Lions WR Jameson Williams and Bucs S Ryan Neal – Photo by: USA Today

Ryan Neal’s responsibility based off of this play ended up being to chase Jameson Williams from the box on the far side of the field. Neal is nowhere near as fast as Williams.

Add in the context of the corner route breaking away from Neal means he was leveraged from jump street. It’s honestly incredible that he was able to get to Williams to even attempt to make a play on the ball. Well that and the fact that the throw was incredibly underthrown. He did have his hand in Williams’ arms to try and break up the pass, after all.

Based on the look of the play I can’t help but think it wasn’t a great defensive play call by the Bucs. Pre-snap you are leaving three defenders to cover three receivers to the concept side with your “extra help” being a bailing strong safety from the far-side box.

Additionally, two of those three initial defenders, Devin White (No. 45) and Winfield are both heavily leveraged to the inside. The only explanation for this that I can think of is that Bowles anticipated the Lions to call a play with a ton of in-breaking routes.

Todd Bowles Said Post-Game The Play Was The Result Of A Coverage “Bust”

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today

In his post game press conference Bucs head coach Todd Bowles said that the defense had a “bust” that allowed the score.

“The two touchdowns they score, one was third-and-10, one was third-and-14,” Bowles said. “We had two busts that never should have happened. And that’s on us as coaches, on us as players.”

Now full disclosure: I don’t know what the Bucs coverage rules are to know who “busted” the coverage.

But thinking through the movements of the players, the likely coverage that was called based off of those movements and I have to think that maybe Antoine Winfield Jr. read the play wrong and based on the vertical release of Williams he shouldn’t have driven down to the flat.

In third-and-10 the short out is the least dangerous route. The only other possibility I can think of is that Devin White may have had seam carry on the apex (Jameson Williams). While White shouldn’t be expected to cover Williams through the route he could have given better horizontal leverage under the route and helped dissuade Jared Goff from making the throw.

Either Way, Ryan Neal Was Given A Near-Impossible Assignment

Again, I can’t be sure which Bucs defender busted the coverage. I can tell you that in that situation there are maybe two or three safeties on earth who could have properly defended it.

For the amount of ground Ryan Neal had to cover both vertically and laterally, out-leveraged, he was asked to do the near impossible. Todd Bowles is a great defensive mind, who has consistently fielded some of the best defenses in the league. On this play, even if the coverage wasn’t busted, there were better options from a play-call standpoint to prevent that touchdown.