All-Twenty Tuesday: Bucs QB Jameis Winston

Let’s take a look at all 11 of Winston’s interceptions from 2017 starting with a rough Minnesota game. After getting out of Week 1 without a turnover, Winston and company headed to Minnesota for what would be a rude awakening for this Bucs team.

Winston’s first interception of the season is shown above, and boy, it’s not pretty. I cannot imagine an easier deep ball throw that Winston just whiffs on. It’s almost as if you can see the fear and hesitation in the rotation of the ball as he lame ducks one of the fastest receivers in the game who had about a 3-yard cushion. When we talk about having a gunslinger mentality, that ain’t it. I don’t know if it was the pressure from the media, the pressure from receiver DeSean Jackson or the pressure he put on himself, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t a chemistry thing with Jackson – it was hesitation.

That throw had no confidence, and we already know Winston struggles with accuracy and deep ball placement. So if there isn’t confidence in a throw to make up for it, chances are it won’t end well.

Winston’s second interception of the game looked like a throw that wasn’t even close, but if you look at it from his angle, you can see why the throw appeared so misplaced.

Now this one I’ll believe you if you told me it was a chemistry thing between Winston and Jackson. The cornerback Trae Waynes did a nice job of re-routing Jackson without causing a penalty, but Jackson tried to go high around him and it looked like Winston thought he would just step down, keep moving and go low.

That one wasn’t really a gunslinger throw, it wasn’t bad ball placement or even the wrong read, it was just sort of unlucky in a few ways. You can live with those as long as you control everything else around the bad luck as much as possible.

Whew, buddy. Now that’s a gunslinger throw right there.

“How many defenders do you see in this play?”

“I only see one player here and it’s my wide receiver.”

You love it and you hate it. At that point in the game – a frustrating game – the Bucs were down double digit points and needed to zip it in the end zone quick to have any chance at scoring, so I get why he was locked in on Mike Evans, but the Vikings were locked in on Evans, too. That’s something we’ll go over a bit more later on, but it seemed like the playoff defenses Winston went up against knew his tendencies and game plan better than Winston knew theirs. A few of the throw we’ll go over here soon have that lack of confidence in them, and I think it’s because Winston hasn’t turned his experience into instincts yet.

It’s plays like the one above that give me the biggest doubt about Winston’s game. I believe that eventually his experience will turn into instincts and that his chemistry within the offense will become elevated and we will see a much more confident Winston in some of those deep throws. Those will get better. But, it’s throws like the one above that I’m no so confident he will improve on, even with time.

The throw above is a placement throw. It’s not about timing or chemistry; it’s just about leading the receiver. There is no experience or chemistry that needs to be built for Winston to lead Cameron Brate on that play. It’s drop back zone coverage. Winston knows this when he watches how the linebacker shuffles back with his eyes on the ball and not the man, and on a seam with the linebacker on the outside hip, you have to put the ball shading towards the middle of the field. Winston knows that. He just didn’t do it. Not because of ignorance or rebellion, but because he tried to and didn’t put it where he wanted to. That worries me. Winston’s thrown thousands and thousands of passes in his lifetime. He knows his own mechanics. He knows how to get it there. He tried to and didn’t do it. I’m not saying this to be a doubter. I genuinely don’t know how much he can or will improve in that area.

Was the aggravated shoulder a factor here? Who knows?

There are areas of his game that will certainly improve as he is only 24 years old. Does age and experience matter for ball placement in instances like the one above? I don’t really think so.

Not a lot to say about this one. It was more on his offensive line than him.

Even though there was a pump fake and hesitation to throw the ball, which is ultimately what gave the edge rusher the time to get to him, the defensive backs were dropping into what could have been quarters coverage or Cover 2, which Winston could not decipher until that moment. There wasn’t enough bite on what the safety was going to do to risk throwing the deep ball earlier than that. If the line would have picked that guy up, that could have been a big play.

The second interception from the Carolina game, however, was not good.

This interception was more of the ball placement issue that we discussed before. Even if Winston though Brate was stopping on that play, as it sort of appeared he did, that ball has to be away father away from Carolina linebacker Luke Kuechley. Winston has to know this and he has to do it. Ball placement worries me.

Winston threw two interceptions in the Lions game, which continued his trend of “when it rains it pours.” He only had one game where he threw just on interception. All the rest were multiple-interception games.

I feel like I have to credit the play above again to a lack of confidence. That ball should have been out of Winston’s hands way sooner. Like, a full second sooner. That’s an anticipation throw. You’re supposed to time when the receiver is turning around with when the ball is arriving. Instead, Winston waited for Jackson to completely turn around to even begin his wind up. Anytime you give a Pro Bowl cornerback like Darius Slay the chance to recover, he will.

That throw might be a little bit of a chemistry thing between he and Jackson, but no matter what, Winston has to put the throw where it is going to succeed. If the receiver doesn’t get there, fine, but the defender won’t either and he at least gave the play a chance. By waiting or being hesitant, he kills the chance before it even gets off the ground. He has to be the tone setter for every throw, not the receiver. He wasn’t there.

The second interception from the Lions game was sort of more bad luck. Tight end O.J. Howard was getting held and there was no flag. I think Winston saw the contact and was just trying to put it in the area to get the free first down and the flag never came. Sometimes savvy quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers do that sort of thing, so I get it. Just a bit unlucky, I guess.

Finally we get to the Saints game, and sheesh, some of these three interceptions aren’t pretty, starting with this one.

This is a gunslinger’s throw right here. It’s a tight window with four defenders in the area and Winston still thought he could get it in there. He was wrong. Normally I’d say you can live with this throw, knowing that Winston is going to try to do stuff like this (as Brett Favre, Ben Roethlisberger and Matthew Stafford do), but Winston said after this game that he was trying to get Evans his 1,000 receiving yards and that just needs to not be a thing. As stated previously, Winston needs to worry about where the ball needs to go, both with which player and in its placement. That’s it. That’s a maturity thing.

Winston’s second to last interception of the season looked a lot like his first. It was a pass that had no business being intercepted, and the only reason it was is because Winston was afraid.

You can’t be a gunslinger-type quarterback and have fear. If you are, you’re just a bad quarterback. You have to have unwavering confidence that you can make every throw. I’m not saying you attempt every throw you think you can make, but when that green light goes off in your mind, you have to put that ball where you know it needs to go without hesitation. No incompletion in the past can cloud your mind. In this throw above and the one to Jackson in Minnesota, if Winston would have just led his receiver they would have been in the end zone.

You cannot be a gunslinger with regret.

This last interception is a fitting one for Winston, and there’s only so much I can criticize of it knowing how Winston is.

On this throw, it was late in the play, all the receivers were improvising and he just threw it up there to Evans. All the great gunslingers do this; sometimes you connect, sometimes you don’t. When you do, you’re a hero. When you don’t they call you a fool.

I will say, though, Winston does have a bad tendency here of locking into what he’s doing. I wouldn’t even say I hate the throw, but it wasn’t the right one.

Just because Winston can make all the throws doesn’t mean he should, but you’ll never get the gunslinger out of him. In order for him to make it – to be Stafford or in a crazy run of a career perhaps anywhere near Favre – Winston has to improve his ball placement. I don’t even know how much he can, but if he doesn’t, his ceiling is going to be much lower than people might think.

Next, I think he needs to do a better job of turning experience into instinct. He needs to be able to know what defenses are going to do as well as they seem to know him. He needs to manipulate defenses and completely change it up. He needs to be able to do that in preparation. And finally, he has to remain confident. To be the kind of quarterback he is, there cannot be any fear or doubt or hesitation.

He needs to be the Winston he thought was invincible during his Heisman campaign. If he doesn’t get that through his mind, we’ll always be hoping for him to be more.