I'm a huge fan of FootballOutsiders work and they do a great pre-season primer on the NFL and each team. If you're interested in analytics, it's a must read. And seeing as I'll be referencing it, I should probably link to it here.
This will be a LONG post but I encourage you to look at each piece. This isn't my take but a host of fascinating Bucs stats and observations from FO. I'll quote the most interesting ones here for those who still wont' read the whole thing, but I'd encourage you to take a look. I've tried to organize as effectively as possible. And more so, grab the book/PDF.
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Too Long, Won't Read
*FO predicts 6.4 wins and 31st in the NFL. Historically, they've been within 2 wins the last 6 seasons and the Bucs have only exceeded their predictions (2016) 1/6 years.
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*All Arians QBs have taken 1-2 seaons to move from average to elite play.
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*Bucs actually blitzed at an average, above average rate. This doesn't distinguish Smith from Duffner.
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*Bucs D was strong against passes to the deep middle but very weak to passes to deep left/right. Also very weak in the short middle.
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*Winston is usually very good under pressure and mediocre with no pressure. This flipped in 2017. Very weird how the two negatively correlate.
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*Cool play: Barber was hit behind the line vs. Cleveland by 3 defenders but managed to drag the 3rd one (Jamie Collins) for 5 yards.
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*Donovan Smith has given up a huge number of blown blocks in the run and pass, ranking near the bottom of all LTs in both 2017 and 2018.
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*Overall the OL was terrible in run blocking but average in pass protection.
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*Grimes was even worse than you thought. Andrew Adams was easily (statistically) the Bucs best DB. Ryan Smith played very well. He was targeted a lot but gave up relatively few yards and had a high success rate when targeted.
Overall, I found the secondary breakdown particularly interesting.
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*Bucs have had a bad ST unit going back 7 seasons now. Unfortunately, Arians has never had a good ST unit either.
A lot more stats, player data, and quotes below.
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Tampa Bay Projections
*Projected to have 6 wins (they were projected for 7 in 2018). The offense is projected to rank 30th and the defense 31st.
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*“The more realistic outlook is that the Buccaneers have missed their optimal window for contention and that it might be too late for a course correction. Their core players are no longer bargains, which is problematic given that those core players have produced 10 wins over the past two seasons. Almost 55 percent of Tampa Bay’s salary cap is tied up in just eight players—Winston, Mike Evans, Pierre-Paul, Donovan Smith, Ali Marpet, Ryan Jensen, Lavonte David, and Suh. Only the Chargers and Vikings have a greater percentage of their salary cap tied up in eight players. During an NFL season, things are going to go wrong, and usually the survivors are the ones who made contingency plans. That’s not the Buccaneers. They’re built on hope, not depth. Chances are the offense will decline some, the defense will improve, and we’ll be just as skeptical a year from now as we are today.”
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*The Bucs are ranked 31st in Football Outsiders projections (0.1 win behind WAS and 0.2 wins behind DEN). Aaron Schatz, the FO lead, commented that there is absolutely a narrative where the Bucs can significantly outperform their projections. In fact, he picks them as one of the teams he thinks is likeliest to do so. But that does not change the Bucs have a high chance of being a bad football team.
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*I liked this line: "Which brings us to new coach Bruce Arians. What a find. Good thing the Buccaneers enlisted executive recruiting firm Korn Ferry to help them in their search. Otherwise, they would have hired Bruce Arians."
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*FootballOutsiders projections have been very accurate in projecting the Buc win totals every year (the largest “error” margin was 2.1 wins in 2014 where they projected the 2-14 Bucs would be 4-12).
Yet, the Bucs have only outperformed the FO projections 1/6 years: 2016.
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Passing
The QB competition we never asked for and somehow deserved.
*Fitpatrick outperformed Winston in DVOA, average yards, YAC, catch %, and TD% but was worse in INT%.
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*Winston had a 3.7 YAC to Fitpatrick’s 5.3 suggesting that some of the Bucs YAC issues are on Winston.
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*Bucs were 8th in offensive DVOA on 1st down but 27th on 2nd and 3rd on 3rd down. This partly reflects Winston’s talent at throwing for 1st downs.
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*Throwback - Koetter does not understand that the run game has little impact on play action effectiveness (as viewed by his historical PA playcalling - he only calls PA when he has a strong run game). Bucs ranked 31st in PA playcalls.
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*Shocker: Bucs were 32nd (10.1%) of passes at/behind the line of scrimmage.
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*Winston has been very good under pressure, ranking 2nd to Mahomes (by a decent margin). But, he’s been below average when NOT under pressure. Interestingly, the one exception is 2017 where this flipped. Honestly, its bizarre.
And the problem is performance under pressure is not statistically consistent. Not surprisingly, how players perform under pressure varies a lot year-to-year across their career. What is predictive is performance when NOT pressured and Winston has been consistently mediocre.
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*FO predicts Winston to take a small step back in COMP%, throws for 4729 yards, 28 TDs, and 17 INTs and rank ~16th in DVOA. That is, more of the same.
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*Since 2015, Winston has thrown INTs at the 2nd highest rate in the NLF (INT on 3% of passes). Second only to… Fitpatrick! Winston has also thrown multiple INTs in 16 games which is only matched by one QB… No, not Fitzpatrick – Blake Bortles.
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*“There has been no shortage of excuses for Winston’s interception problem. You name it, someone in Tampa Bay has blamed it—DeSean Jackson’s moodiness, Mike Smith’s defense, Dirk Koetter’s love for Bit-O-Honey candy bars, Mike Smith’s defense, the run game’s ineffectiveness, Mike Smith’s defense, Hillary’s e-mails, Mike Smith’s defense. Even Arians has gotten in on the act, arguing that the ping-ponging between Winston and Fitzpatrick last season hurt both of them. “I think sometimes, they were both looking over their shoulder,” he said. Never mind that it was Winston’s suspension. Never mind that it was Winston’s suspension that set the back-and-forth in motion. Arians also has suggested that the defense was part of the problem, though he was kind enough to not mention Mike Smith by name… Since 2015, [Winston’s] 12 interceptions in the first quarter rank second, his 15 in the second quarter rank fourth, his 12 in the third quarter rank third, and his 18 in the fourth quarter rank fourth. Far too often, he is a liability.”
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*Per FO, Arians should call more play action as Bucs ranked 31st in PA passes. But Arians doesn’t like PA, having ranked above 26th only one year.
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*Manning, Roethlisberger, and Palmer were all average in their first seasons with Arians. Manning made the leap in his 2nd season while Roethlisberger and Palmer did in their 3rd.
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*Bucs were last with 4.3 average YAC. This has been a problem for the Bucs for a while, and the 4th time in 6 years they’ve ranked last in YAC (they were 29th and 27th the other two years). These issues predate Winston (and Koetter) by 2 years. However, Arians offenses have also struggled with YAC.
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*Wintson was blitzed by a DB a league-low of 5% of passing plays.
Rushing
*Neither Koetter nor Arians run much from shotgun. Again, their offences are schematically very similar (still with important differences).
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*Winston and Fitzpatrick were the only Bucs rushers with a positive DVOA.
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*Barber was 9th in carries in 2018. Of those 8 other RBs, only David Johnson was more inefficient than Barber. A lot of this was OL of course – in one play vs. Cleveland 3!!! Browns hit Barber in the backfield. And yet! Barber literally dragged the last tackler (Jamie Collins) 5 yards. That’s awesome.
Barbers biggest weakness is his lack of dynamism and pass catching. But he’s a hard nosed runner suited to a RB timeshare.
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*Jones was hit behind the LOS on 11/23 carries. At the same time, he struggled to find holes and was too cautious behind the line. He also only broke ONE tackle.
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*”The Buccaneers don’t think he lacks talent; they think he lacks confidence. So instead of investing in a functional right guard, Tampa Bay hasbeen paying Jones compliments.” Lol.
Offensive Line
*Donovan Smith led the team in blown blocks leading to a sack, blown bock son pass plays (16) and blown blocks on running plays (8). This continues play from 2017.
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*Smith was 25th (out of 35th) in blown blocks/snap by LTs. This was somehow an improvement from his 30th ranking in 2017.
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*Purely by the metric of blown blocks in run/pass, Dotson was the Bucs best OL.
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* While Marpet gave up the second fewest sacks (Jensen was 1sT), he did have a surprisingly high number of blown blocks on passing plays (12) behind only D Smith. He was much better in these metrics in 2017. How much was play, position, and being beside D Smith?
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*Bucs OL was actually league average in rushing in 2017, but was 31st in 2018. They were 30th in stuffed runs and struggled getting to the second level and in the open field, all being bottom 5.
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*Interestingly, in the last 3 years the Bucs OL has been 16th, 16th, and 15th in adjusted sack rate. They were also 14th and 18th in pressure given up (2017 and 2018).
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*Bucs OL was above average in false starts in 2018.
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*FO also has a “continuity” metric which measures how consistent the OL was in their performance. The Bucs OL was actually very consistent in its performance.
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*Bucs are devoting ~1/4 of their salary cap to their OL. It’s the 3rd most expensive OL in the league behind the Cowboys and Packers.
Wide Receivers/Tight Ends
*Evans was 4th in DYAR and 3rd in DVOA.
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*Before 2018 what kept Evans out of the top 5 WR conversation was his lack of efficiency. He always had a lot of volume but struggled to turn it into production at the rate the top 5 WRs do.
“In 2018, though, he was better than ever, as he set career bests in not only receiving yards but also catch rate, yards per catch, receiving +/-, DYAR, and DVOA. So why the improvement? Part of the answer is that Jameis Winston targeted him deeper down the field.”
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*FO projects a bit of regression but still a very big season from Evans.
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*In terms of Godwin getting 80-100 catches, FO says this is very unlikely. Only once has an Arians offense had two 80+ catch receivers: Fitzgerald and David Johnson in 2016.
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*Statistically and in DVOA/DYAR rankings Godwin took a small a step back in 2018.
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*Unsurprisingly, Jackson even when not being thrown to has a big impact on the rest of the WRs. FO saw that in plays it opened up for Evans, Brate, and Howard. Every offense Jackson has played on in the past 4 years has been top 10 in passing DVOA.
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*Arians has ranked between 10th and 16th in 2 TE sets. But while he puts TEs on the field, he doesn’t always throw to them. This seems to be more a product of talent – he threw to Heath Miller but not Jermaine Gresham.
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*Not much unusual on TEs. FO expects a big year from Howard. One thing: was in the slot on 57% of his snaps in 2018.
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General Defense
*And yes, the defense was awful. Since DVOA has been tracked only 4 teams have failed to improve after finishing last in defensive DVOA. The last team (before the Bucs) was the 2007-08 Lions. In 2017 when the offense began a drive it trailed, by average, 4.1 points (28th). In 2018 it trailed by an average of 3.6 points (25th).
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*The Buccaneers also allowed a 72.5% completion % and a 110.9 passer rating – both 2nd highest rankings of all time.
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*Even without accounting for Bowles, the defense should improve in both performance and turnovers purely because of regression to the mean.
“If the defense improves—and our projections say it will— the turnaround will be attributed to Bowles and his scheme. To be sure, coaching will be an influence, but one factor will have almost nothing at all to do with coaching: injuries. Tampa Bay was among the least healthy teams in the NFL last season, and the defense was especially hard hit. The Buccaneers accumulated 109.3 adjusted games lost, 92.0 of which were on defense, obliterating the previous record of 77.5 set by the 2014 Raiders. They had the most games lost at linebacker and the second-most at defensive back. Better injury luck alone could elevate the defense to respectability.”
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*Defensively, Bucs were in Base personnel 31% and Nickel 57%. Their Dime Personnel (10%) was by far their best defense by DVOA. Teams ran primarily 11 personnel (61%), 12 personnel (17%) and 21 personnel (10%) vs the Bucs.
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*I’m bolding this one: Buccaneers blitzed 5 (17.1%) and 6+ (6.9%) which ranks 16th and 9th respectively. That is, Mike Smith/Duffner blitzed at an average to above average rate. 2017 was the year the Bucs rarely blitzed, ranking 29th in rushing 5 and 12th in rushing 6+.
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*An actual shocker: Bucs were 6th in 3-and-outs (on 24.6%) of drives.
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*Bucs D was 6th against passes in the deep middle, but in bottom ten of passes to either side.
Defensive Line
*McCoy led the Bucs in hits (15) and was 2nd in hurries (22). For comparison, JPP had 9 hits and 27 hurries.
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*Suh had 15 hits and 30 hurries and otherwise outperformed every Bucs DL via FO’s stats. It is worth remembering the talent around him was also far superior.
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*Interestingly, McCoy was run at the least on the Bucs starting DL (including Vea). When run at, he performed better than the rest of the Bucs DL other than Nassib as measured by run stops, defeats, broken tackles, and rush yards gained. Overall while run at half as often as JPP their stats were similar per play.
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*Allen was not good as a run stuffer. Bucs were better against the run when he was off the field and statistically he did not do well.
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*In limited snaps Barrett was had a high run stop rate (at Nassib’s level) but also gave up a high rushing yard average.
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*While the Bucs DL/LBs were very good in adjusted sack rate in both 2016 (6th) and 2018 (8th) - 2017 was the aberration where they ranked 32nd. But interestingly, they were 25th or worse in pressure rate all 3 of those years. Which means that in 2016 and 2018 they were converting sacks at an unsustainable rate.
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*After addition of JPP Buc’s pressure rate went from 32nd to 31st.
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*JPP has played a TON of snaps, ranking 2nd and 5th among edge rushers in 2017/18.
Linebackers
*Kwon gave up as many broken tackles in 366 snaps as David did in 922.
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*David had a very strong year in run defense and unsurprisingly was BY FAR the Bucs best LB. Across the board statistically its not even close, even accounting for players like Kwon who played fewer snaps.
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*David was targeted the most in the passing game but this also was because of matchups Smith put David in. David was not very good in success rate when targeted (22nd among LBs) and in yards given up (30th).
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With a better DC this should improve as David is put in better positions. But, in Mike Smith’s defense you also had to put one of your best players in positions to impact the play even if not ideal for him. Remember, the Bucs other LBs to get snaps were Kwon (6 games), Adarius Taylor, and Devante Bond. That’s a terrible LB corps after David.
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*The Bucs MLBs (hello Kwon) were terrible in coverage, having the 32nd DVOA against short middle passes. White should be a big upgrade here.
Secondary
*Grimes was TERRIBLE against the run. Like, maybe worse than you thought. In the run plays in which he was involved, he achieved a stop at a horribly poor 11%. That was by far the worse rank among all Bucs defensive players, the closest being Justin Evans at 31%.
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*Evans also was very bad against the run. Not only did he struggle to bring runners down, he gave up the 2nd highest rush average – 9.6 vs. Grimes 10.8.
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*For DBs, both Whitehead and Davis were strong run defenders.
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*Grimes was also TERRIBLE against the pass as well, his “success rate” against targets dropping form 28th in 2017 to 73rd in 2018. Only 6 CBs were worse. It was a travesty Grimes kept his starting job as he was a completely liability in run AND pass.
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*That being said, VH3 has never had a coverage success rate above 45%. Grimes success rate, which ranked 73rd, was 43%. VH3 needs to drastically improve to be a starting NFL CB.
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*MJ Stewart and Ryan Smith were targeted a lot, on 26.3% and 20.7% of their pass plays, respectively. They went after Stewart on shorter pass plays relative to Ryan Smith, as expected.
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*Carlton Davis, MJ Stewart, and Jordan Whitehead, combined for an abysmal 11 passes defensed.
Davis and Stewart were known as press man corners, why were they drafted for Mike Smith’s scheme? Even if Mike Smith told Licht he wanted more press man corners, it would require a radical shift for these to be scheme fits. I don’t buy Licht’s defense (perpetuated by Pewter Report) that it was just Mike Smith not communicating what he wanted.
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*Andrew Adams was very effective in coverage leading the Bucs in success rate, yards given up, passes defensed and INTs. Why wasn’t he retained?
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*Teams targeted Davis deep.
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*Evans gave up a lot of yards when targeted followed by Stewart and then Grimes.
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*While Ryan Smith was targeted a lot, he had the 3rd highest success rate behind Adams and Davis (by 1%), was 2nd in passes defenced, and gave up the 2nd lowest adjusted yards after Adams.
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Special Teams
*The Bucs have had a below average special teams unit for 7 seasons in a row. Last 3 years? 20th, 29th, 28th.
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*Arians has not been better ranking 27th, 21st, 29th, 30th, and 28th.
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*The Bucs have been bad at special teams across the board: kicking, punting, returning… It’s all bad.
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*What’s wrong with the Bucs? After being released Chandler Catanzaro was replaced he was 5/5 for FGs in Carolina and hit all but one XP.
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*”Bradley Pinion comes over from San Francisco because Tampa Bay was willing to make him the league’s 10th-highest paid punter. The thinking was that Pinion would handle kickoffs, but then … Matt Gay. It’s a wonder that the Buccaneers are in salary-cap trouble and have had just one compensatory draft pick since 2011.”
