All-Twenty Tuesday: Where’s The FitzMagic?

There’s a good chance that you all thought Bucs quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick’s night was worse than it really was. I certainly did until I went back and really looked at the tape with context.

Now, I say that, and then show the clip above – not a great start.

Fitzpatrick was not as sharp as he was in the first two games, there is no doubt about that. I’m not sure if it was the nerves of Monday Night Football, the nerves of living up to the FitzMagic craze, the magic wearing off or the constant duress he was under from Pittsburgh’s defense. He didn’t have too many blatant misses like the one above, but that was the beginning of a night that you could tell just was not clicking the way the previous two did with accuracy and timing.

Fitzpatrick followed up the poor pass to Mike Evans by serving up Chris Godwin on a silver platter to get absolutely punished.

Fitzpatrick had plenty of tight-window throws in the first two games, but none of them had the hang time like the one we saw Godwin go for early in that game. Fitzpatrick threw that ball off his back foot, and you could just tell that something was off from the start. Even though I’m going to highlight some of the things Fitzpatrick still did well, he came out like an assassin against New Orleans and Philadelphia, and that was not the case against Pittsburgh.

Starting fast is something this team has to do with regularity this season.

As the game began to settle down, so did Fitzpatrick.

The play above required the same type of throw that the one to Godwin did, one Fitzpatrick actually had the confidence to step into it rather than throw off his back foot with pressure around.

The Steelers play a lot of Cover 3 and Cover 1 defense. With that comes linebackers required to drop into seams with tight ends or sometimes receivers in the slot, if they’re close enough to the offensive line at the snap.

Knowing that, it was smart for the Buccaneers to use their tight ends to go after Pittsburgh’s slower, less instinctual linebackers, who are a weak spot in coverage. Early in the game you saw multiple passes to O.J. Howard and Cameron Brate with linebackers on them in coverage, and for most of the first half that was to the Bucs advantage. As stated before, once the game slowed down a bit, Fitzpatrick wasn’t afraid to throw over that slower linebacker dropping back into a zone to hit a tight end over the middle.

Even when the Steelers played Cover 2, their linebackers were no match for the Buccaneers offensive weapons from the slot. Tampa Bay basically had their pickin’s of whatever they wanted.

The problem was, they turned the ball over, but even that needs context.

For as much as we talked to the Bucs offensive linemen this week about being ready for a 3-4 defense, they sure weren’t ready for it. When the Steelers line up with a stand-up pass rusher as the defensive end on one side, and blitzed from that same side, the Bucs’ offensive line had all sorts of trouble picking it up. On the play above, the right guard Evan Smith ended up not blocking anyone due to Dotson’s failure to take the far rusher.

This certainly wasn’t the only play where that happened, but on this play, the free blitzing linebacker was able to bat Fitzpatrick’s pass into the air for the interception. Bad luck for Fitz, who has to just try to make the throw, but an even worse job by the offensive line to not shift and pick it up. It’s tough to tell coming from that 3-4 defense, but that’s a job that had to be executed better.

Alright, we have to really dig into this one.

When I saw this play live I thought it was a horrible throw by Fitzpatrick. I thought it was his worst throw of the year. But, in reality, this appeared to be more Mike Evans’ fault than Fitzpatrick’s.

I already mentioned earlier that the Steelers play a lot of Cover 3 as their base. The offensive concept The Buccaneers ran above is a classic Cover 3 beater. It’s called a “95” or a “Y-Cross.” It’s where you have the receiver on the outside take a go route up the field to clear the cornerback on the boundary and you pair that by sending your slot wide receiver over the middle on a variation of a drag route that fades deeper and deeper behind the linebacker and in between the single deep safety.

The idea is that this ball should be thrown above the linebacker’s head and near the sideline to that crossing wide receiver. That way the corner can’t get to it since he’s running downfield with the outside wide receiver, the linebacker can’t get to it because he can’t drop that far, and the safety can’t get to it because he can’t get over there fast enough.

This is what it’s suppose to look like.

But, as you can see, Evans stops on his route. He squats in the soft zone over the middle, which, to the untrained eye may seem like a good thing to do since he’s open there and there’s a first down. But the game of football, especially at the NFL level, is so heavily based on timing and throwing to a spot that you can’t audible like that mid-play. There are variations of Y-Cross that allow the crossing receiver to squat in that zone, if it’s there, but not against Cover 3 defenses.

Fitzpatrick should have thrown that ball closer to the sideline, but I think that the whole timing was messed up when Evans slowed down. Even though that ball should’ve been closer to the sideline, that throw was probably good enough for Evans to catch right over that linebacker, had he kept running the route at full speed, as intended.

The Buccaneers got exactly what they wanted on that play, and that’s why Fitzpatrick threw that ball. Evans should’ve kept running. That one really wasn’t on Fitzpatrick either.

Again, when I watched this live I just thought it was a horrible throw, but really, after I watched it with the All-22 angle and with it slowed down, it appeared that Fitzpatrick’s arm was hit during the release, which didn’t allow him to follow through on the throwing motion, hence why the ball sailed on a wide open Jacquizz Rodgers.

After watching it from the angle above, it does appear like something did not allow Fitzpatrick’s arm to finish his throwing motion and get that ball down. Is that still somewhat on him for not avoiding the pressure enough to get a safe throw off? Yes, I suppose he’s not totally off the hook, but that was the third of three interceptions he had during the first half that were not nearly as much with Fitzpatrick to blame as I thought.

If you take all that into context and then watch Fitzpatrick come back out there after his third interception in a row and drop an absolute dime to Evans, then have the second half he did? Man…

Let’s make this clear: Fitzpatrick did not have the same type of game he did in the first two weeks. However, his night was not nearly as damning and not nearly as “start Winston right now – no matter what” as watching it live may have led you to believe. The offensive line was much more to blame than Fitzpatrick was that night.

It wasn’t magic, but it wasn’t disaster. Fitzpatrick will likely get one more game as this team’s starter, but that discussion is for the next page.

P.S.: For those of you reading this who are mad I didn’t talk about the defense. I went over some of the communication mishaps on Twitter, but I wanted to give it another week of Brent Grimes back to see how they adjusted with him to really get into the success and failures we’re seeing.