All-Twenty Tuesday: Bucs’ Run-Stopping Struggles

The grand exposing of the Bucs’ faulty run defense started in the Minnesota game.

Not many things went well that game, but especially against the run, where Vikings rookie running back Dalvin Cook racked up 97 yards on the ground in Minnesota’s (mostly) blowout victory.

That seemed to be where the Bucs realized they didn’t have the effective size they thought they did. In the play above, notice how spread out the Bucs defensive line was.

From this angle you can see that the Bucs’ front four was so spread out that it made the situation perfect for what the offense wanted. The play was designed to run away from Tampa Bay All-Pro defensive tackle Gerald McCoy. With so much space between the next defensive tackle and any sort of help, that made the double team to the right side of the line an easy task, and then made branching off to the second level to seal off the linebackers easy as well. There was no immediate help in the middle; no disruption of the zone blocking design for the offense.

McCoy ended up making the tackle, but a 6-yard run is easily labeled as a successful play for the offense.

I actually really liked this next play from Minnesota. It featured two backs in the backfield, making either a threat to run or pass.

The play was a creative one when combined with the split-zone blocking concept that we see above where the guard pulled behind the line of scrimmage to seal off the defender, but even though the play had a nice design, its success shouldn’t have been as great as it was, and that’s because the Buccaneers made it way too easy.

Look at how much space was in the middle of the offensive line on that play.

There wasn’t a single defensive player within the first three blockers. That’s the easiest run play up the middle that you can possibly give an offense. The Bucs seemed to be emphasizing edge players and speed off the corners with how they were lining up their defensive line, but that only made it much easier for the Vikings to run up the middle. The Bucs made the mistake of thinking they were all good in the middle and just went straight to getting fancy with how they used their edge players. They didn’t take care of their business on the inside.

After getting exposed by Minnesota, the Bucs did adjust how they set up their defensive line with a more compact approach. That worked against the New York Giants and even the New England Patriots. But when the Bucs rolled into Arizona, they got smacked in the mouth a different way – a more problematic way.

In the play above, the first carry of the game for running back Adrian Peterson, you can just hear the thought going through the minds of the coach, “Oh, crap, we don’t have anyone other than Gerald McCoy who can break the line.”

It was a series of “That doesn’t work” for Tampa Bay’s defensive line last year. In the end, there ended up being too many players along the line who needed to be scheme-protected as opposed to scheme-versatile – it’s dangerous to confuse the two.

Look at how far defensive end Noah Spence is off the line on that play. I assume it is because him playing at 242 pounds meant he had to really play a wide-9 position to use his speed well enough to avoid contact to make a difference. That was only put in play because the Bucs thought they could stick 320-pound Chris Baker next to him and he could hold two gaps on his own. Truth is Baker couldn’t even hold one. So now, instead of having a “specialist” on the outside edge in a feature role, now you just have two glaring weak spots. The results were often what you saw above: Baker getting bodied and Spence not a factor against the run.

As the game went on, it became clear that none of the other defensive linemen on the Buccaneers could get push besides McCoy. McCoy was often getting pressure to no avail, mainly because the linebackers and safeties were also so far back in their assignments that even when they recognized it was a run play, them running up to the gap was too little too late, as offensive linemen or wide receivers coming in to help would be them to positions and angles.

Eventually, as the Cardinals realized the Bucs weren’t switching things up, not because they didn’t see it but because they were already throwing their best situations out there and it wasn’t working, they just started to double team McCoy, knowing the rest of the defensive line wasn’t going to do anything – and they were right.

The rest of the Cardinals game became a series of plays like the one above where whenever the team needed a few yards on the ground they knew they could get it. Adrian Peterson accounted for 134 yards of Arizona’s 160 yards rushing, and also rushed for two touchdowns while averaging 5.2 yards per carry.

It wasn’t even the averages the Bucs gave up, it was the mental aspect of the game where an offensive coordinator knew he could call a run play at any time. That, in turn, kept the defense guessing, which meant they were more on their heels, which meant they didn’t play as aggressive. All that started up front with a lack of control of the line.

As the season went on you could just tell the Bucs were mentally beat; they knew they didn’t have the players on the roster to stop the run, and they knew that their defensive strategy was just to hold on and hope the offense catches fire because of it.

The play above late in the season against the Falcons is one that I spotted where I saw that kind of spirit. In it, the Bucs had one of their linebackers down near the line of scrimmage as the strongside linebacker to help against the run on first down with a tight end to that side. But, when the tight end motioned to the other side, the Bucs didn’t rotate anyone down like they had on the other side. They didn’t do this because the didn’t want Lavonte David to go down near the line of scrimmage because they were afraid of taking him out of coverage position, if it was a play action. But, that less-aggressive form of thinking left them too far back when the toss play was called, and Davonta Freeman was at the line of scrimmage with a full head of steam before he even had to engage with a defender. Freeman rushed for 126 of Atlanta’s 201 yards rushing in a 24-21 victory on Monday Night Football.

That was the sign of a very limited front seven.

Even when the Bucs seemed to have the right alignment, they simply were not big enough, strong enough or consistent enough to stop the run. They were often bulldozed in the middle, and that’s why their record was what it was, and why their defensive stats were some of the worst in the league.

The Buccaneers just did not have the personnel to succeed last year, and the blame on that has multiple culprits. Licht certainly thought too highly of his defense coming off 2016, but maybe that has to do with how the coaches viewed their players, too. The guys they brought in didn’t end up helping, and the changes they made actually put them further behind the 8-ball, once exposed.

Thankfully, in theory, the culprits that were to blame from the year before recognized what had to be changed and hit it hard during the offseason. Tampa Bay has added size, strength, consistency and experience to its front seven, and hopefully that leads to a more aggressive defense that can actually get after the line of scrimmage against the run and the pass.