Here Comes Jameis - MMQB

Sitting home one morning this week. Phone pings. Text message from an NFL executive.“Watch the QB,” was the message underneath a video clip. I pressed the arrow and watched.Overtime in Tampa Bay-Atlanta. Second-and-eight for Tampa Bay at the Atlanta 11. The quarterback, Jameis Winston, takes the snap and pitches to running back Doug Martin. As Martin prepares to hit a hole between the right guard/tackle, Winston sprints into the gap and blocks middle linebacker Paul Worrilow, laying on him while Martin runs by. Gain of four. Would have been a gain of one or two without the Winston block.That’s not how you judge the progress of a young quarterback, and certainly the Bucs aren’t going to want Winston to do that very often—if at all. But it is how you judge the progress of a football player. I asked Winston about the play Thursday afternoon.“I just want to win so bad,” he told me over the phone from Tampa. “Will to win. And you have to understand what was going on at the time. I looked at our line in the huddle. This was overtime. This was toward the end of a 15-play drive. It’s hot. They’re beat. Tired. I just felt like we needed a spark. I just felt like I needed to try to do something to get us going. We’re all tired. Maybe they see me doing that, and they say they’ve got one more play in ‘em. That could make a difference.”The Bucs kicked a field goal on this first drive of overtime (15 plays, 68 yards), then held Atlanta on its first possession. And so, in the first half of his rookie season, Winston had engineered a win at two of the Bucs’ biggest rivals—at New Orleans in Week 2 and now at Atlanta in Week 8.Tampa is 3-4 entering a surprisingly interesting test at home Sunday with the NFC East-leading (but vulnerable) New York Giants. The Bucs are 2-1 since Winston’s meltdown game, a four-interception debacle at Carolina on Oct. 4. And in those three games, Tampa has scored 30.3 points per game, and Winston (four touchdowns, no picks) has a passer rating of 110.5.“I had a big wakeup call those first few games,” Winston said. The Bucs started 1-3, and Winston threw seven interceptions. “After the Carolina game, I felt like I lost that game for us, and I was so down. A division game at home. I just can’t play like that. It was awful. But my teammates, my coaches, coach [Dirk] Koetter, coach [Mike] Bajakian, basically said to me, ‘Hey, you’re going to have games like this. It’s the NFL.’ That opened my eyes.”Koetter has been big on ball protection with his young quarterback—what coordinator wouldn’t be? And what you see when you watch Winston now is a player more attuned to seeing the field, more inclined to freeze a safety with a look before throwing the ball.Case in point: Last week in Atlanta, late in the first half, Winston had the Bucs at Atlanta’s 20-yard line. Two receivers were split left, including rookie Donteea Dye in the slot. At the snap, tight end Cameron Brate ran up the right seam from his spot tight to the formation. Winston looked left, at the curling Dye. For a second, center-fielding Atlanta safety Ricardo Allen, in the deep middle, put his foot in the ground because he thought Winston was going to Dye. Then, quickly, Winston unleashed a ball for Brate three yards deep in the end zone. Allen couldn’t get back in time to provide help, and the ball nestled easily into Brate’s arms. Touchdown.One other interesting play I saw re-watching the game. Winston ran for a four-yard touchdown on what appeared to be a broken play midway through the third quarter. It actually was an interesting design. Dye went in motion, left to right, and Winston had the option to shovel-pass a throw to him. But cornerback Jalen Collins was lurking near the goal line, spying Dye. And another blitzing corner, Robert Alford, looked like he could have picked the ball off and ran forever if Winston actually shoveled the ball toward Dye. So Winston barreled ahead and ran it in for the touchdown.In short, watching the Atlanta game on tape, you see good signs for Winston. And I wondered: Is it possible we were so consumed with questioning everything about Winston after last season that we didn’t see enough of what the Bucs saw? We questioned his goodness and character after the sexual-assault allegation. We questioned his judgment after the shoplifting incident at the grocery story. We questioned his football smarts after his 18 interceptions in 2014. We questioned his dedication to football (well, not many did, but some) after he told me he’d love to play baseball too, someday, and maybe play two sports at once. (He was Florida State’s closer in college, and could throw 95 mph.)But what the Bucs have found in Winston, those around the team say, is a competitive player who leads better than a rookie should (he led the pre-game huddle, urging his mates to pick up linebacker Kwon Alexander, whose brother was shot dead two night before the Atlanta game) and has learned early that his college team could survive his carelessness, but his pro team cannot.“Our offense has come together quicker, hit on all cylinders before we expected,” said Winston. “Our offensive line’s been blocking great, with all the changes there. I think I am being way more patient, at least with reads, seeing things, seeing the whole field. I have always been an aggressive kind of guy, but you realize you have put the offense in jeopardy when you’re too aggressive. So it’s a learning process there.“I am proud of being patient, and putting my energy into all the little things, concentrating on all the details, the mechanics, and not just thinking, ‘I’ve got to make a big play.’”Funny how much things have changed in two months. The storyline early was Marcus Mariota was way ahead of Winston, after Tennessee won the first game of the season in a duel of the top two rookies in the 2015 draft. But in this marathon of a season (and of two careers), there are miles to go before we sleep. Winston is moving along quite nicely.