All Twenty-Tuesday

The Bucs weren’t doing much of anything in that first half against the New Orleans Saints, and even with Jameis Winston certainly leaving his fair share of throws out there, the offensive line didn’t do him – or the running game – any favors.

The first thing I noticed with some of the failures with this offensive line is the chemistry. To be a good offensive line, you not only have to have talent, but you have to all be working as a unit – that’s what makes football so fun and so unique to watch. Unlike most places in other sports, you can’t have one guy just carry you in trench play. If four guys all do their job great but one guy fails – you all fail.

The play above is a good example of the struggling chemistry on this offensive line. As you can see, the Saints did a good job of disguising where their pressure was ultimately going to come from. But, even when there’s a good disguise the better offensive line units know where to help and where to look for other work. On the play above, both left guard J.R. Sweezy and right guard Kevin Pamhile ended up helping one guy, who was already being blocked, and were lost when it was all said and done as their quarterback was on the ground. Both right tackle Demar Dotson and left tackle Donovan Smith are bulled rush into the quarterback at the same time.

Good offensive line play often involves a sixth sense; an ability to just know where the help is needed and where to be. It’s almost like it needs to be more of them just going off instinct rather than even having to read and react. The good ones gel so well that they know where to be.

The play above is another example of either a misunderstanding or a miscommunication, something that altered the success of the play due to how the blocking was executed.

The play is an outside zone run by Doug Martin. Martin gets most of the blame here for cutting back inside and getting tackled quickly, but watch tight end O.J. Howard and Smith bump into each other at the snap. That meant they couldn’t get to their spot quick enough, and that meant that there was no running lane in front of Martin. That’s why he cut back; that’s why it failed.

But, even on simpler blocking concept, the Buccaneers offensive line seems to have some chemistry issues – I say simple, nothing is ever really that simple when it comes to execution in the NFL.

In the play above, it’s Pamphile who got caught at the end of the play with the ball carrier down and no one in front of him being blocked. This is a power blocking concept right up the middle – the basics of football. If you can’t run A gap in the NFL, you won’t in many games. Marpet did his job getting the nose tackle’s outside shoulder and forcing him one way, but then it should have been Pamphile’s job to pick up the linebacker to seal off what should have been at least a few yards up the middle. Instead, he tried to help Smith’s man and was too late to find a guy of his own. Just not the right chemistry, it seems.

Speaking of Smith, it’s time to dig in.

Smith was picked near the top of the second round in the 2015 NFL draft and has been groomed to be the franchise left tackle ever since. Up to this point, he’s never missed a game in his career, although that could change on Sunday as he suffered a leg injury in the team’s 30-10 loss at New Orleans. He started every game his rookie season, the year after that and all of this year. The availability is good, but the execution hasn’t been.

The main gripe with Smith is that he’s an athletic tackle with good size, but doesn’t have the quick feet or the instant reactions to really make the most of them.

When you play left tackle, you have to be able to contain speed rushers and also not get fooled inside. I’m not sure Smith has the ability to do either.

I talked earlier about having good instincts as an offensive lineman, and the clip above gives me doubt about Smith’s instincts.

Notice the subtle hesitation to the outside when the ball is snapped. That put Smith in a hole from the start, and since he doesn’t have elite foot speed to make up for it, he got burned. This is something that happens too often. We saw him get beat around the edge in the clip above that one because of a lack of foot speed, and this time we saw him get beat inside.

He just doesn’t have what it takes to be an elite left tackle. A decent left tackle? Maybe, but that’s all he’ll likely ever be.

Even if this last play has a bit of bad design to it, you should be able to handle a six-man box if you’re an offensive line. You should be able to at least get two yards out of it, and here the Bucs couldn’t even manage that. Smith leaves the defensive end to his left free, which is what the zone play calls for, and his job is to get to the second level to cut off the pursuing linebacker. Martin ruins this play and takes a loss when he should have followed Marpet through the hole – even for no gain. He doesn’t, tries to cutback towards the unblocked defender, and gets tackled for loss. Those are the kind of decisions that got Martin benched on Sunday. The damning thing here is that Smith gives a half-hearted effort to make the block on the linebacker and allows him to come in and clean up the play and help make the tackle.

The Bucs offensive line isn’t without talent, but they certainly are without chemistry. They’re a unit that is struggling to pick each other up, and even when most of them do there job, there seems to be that one among them who doesn’t do his job far too often. We’ve heard of complimentary football as a team, well the Bucs are failing to have complimentary O-line play, too.

Click to the next page as we discuss some short-term and long-term fixes that can be made on this offensive line.