The Bucs have gotten out to a 1-1 start to begin the 2019 season, although it may not have come the way most people thought it would.

After a loss to the 49ers in Week 1 where head coach Bruce Arians asserted that Tampa Bay lost the game more so than San Francisco necessarily won it, a lot of the blame fell on the shoulders of quarterback Jameis Winston. Now, following a bounce-back performance from the fifth-year signal-caller, Winston spoke to the media on Wednesday as the Bucs prepare for a critical Week 3 matchup against Saquon Barkley, newly-named starter Daniel Jones and the New York Giants.

“I think it’s always good to come to this building when you’re coming off of a win,” Winston said. “It gets your juices flowing but we’ve got to continue to get better. We’ve got to know that we have a good Giants team coming in and it would be great for our fans to get a home win because we know what happened last game [against the 49ers.] So we’re really pumped to get into Ray Jay and get a win.”

Bucs QB Jameis Winston – Photo by: PewterReport.com

For Winston, preparation and constant improvement is crucial. The Bucs’ quarterback stated that not only does he continuously come to work every day looking to improve his footwork, he added that preparation is crucial for feeling comfortable in the flow of the game on Sundays. He also emphasized the helpfulness of going against defensive coordinator Todd Bowles’ defense every day at practice due to the similarities between Tampa Bay’s defense and what the Giants like to do on that side of the ball, preparing to take advantage of mismatches, especially with his receiving weapons.

“The good thing is that we practice against it,” Winston said. “All through training camp we’ve seen a lot of it. They do a lot of unique things on third downs where they give you different looks. The good thing about us, if you play us [in man coverage] you have to be really good outside because we have some great players. We take pride in it and we have to win those one-on-one matchups.”

The Bucs have been known, in recent years, to often put themselves in tough situations due to mental errors like blown coverages, turnovers and penalties. It was something Arians coined as “Bucs beating Bucs” in his introductory press conference. The Bucs’ new head coach believes that Tampa Bay’s win on Thursday was a turning point and Winston agrees that Tampa Bay is learning to not accept beating themselves.

“Every game we have to know that we can’t beat ourselves,” Winston said. “If the team is good and they outplay us, we can live with that, but we can’t live with beating ourselves. So every week that’s our focus. We’ve got to go out, be clean and give it our best shot. With the team we have and the talent we have, if we give it our best shot, we can definitely be able to win.”

Bucs TE O.J. Howard – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Winston also touched on a hot subject among Bucs’ fans through two weeks, the struggles of O.J. Howard. The former first-round selection had a fumble and a dropped ball that lead to an interception against the 49ers before turning around and being held without a catch against Carolina, but Winston argues that Howard’s impact goes beyond being a receiver.

Despite not having a catch against the Panthers, Howard was still utilized for his blocking ability and had a crucial lead block on Luke Kuechly that Peyton Barber followed for his 16-yard score late in the third quarter.

“I think that O.J. is an incredibly talented player,” Winston said. “And let’s take my game for example. It wasn’t 350 yards and five touchdowns, it was a well-managed game and people in the trenches are working every single the time. Offensive linemen don’t get a lot of credit but our running backs have been rushing for over 100 yards every game. You will see him have some breakout moments but for right now he’s in the trenches doing his job.”

For Tampa Bay losing has often seemed like a burden that the team carries over week after week, but as the Bucs saw in 2016 how winning can be the same way as they rattled off six wins in their final eight games to narrowly miss the playoffs with a 9-7 record. Winston believes that their most recent win set a tempo and that the Bucs have to make the need to win a regular occurrence.

“It’s just a tempo and we have to love it,” Winston said. “We love winning and we have to love winning so much that we want to continue to have that feeling because winning can be contagious. That’s just the tempo, that’s just the urgency that we have to have because that’s winning football. That’s having great tempo, that’s having great execution, that’s having great urgency and wanting to be out there, loving this game.”