As the season starts to roll on, the Bucs are starting to answer many of the questions that surrounded their offseason outlook. Can Baker Mayfield be more than just a stop-gap quarterback who is considered somewhere between the 25th and 32nd best starter in the NFL? Yes. Can the depth beyond starting cornerbacks Jamel Dean and Carlton Davis III deliver positive contributions to the defense? Yes. Will new offensive coordinator Dave Canales be able to raise the floor of scheme from his predecessor Byron Leftwich? Yes.

One of the biggest questions headed into the season was the capabilities of the Bucs’ offensive line. Those questions became more pronounced when the team lost center Ryan Jensen for the second consecutive season to his devastating knee injury. Just to recap why there were questions surrounding this group quickly:

1. All-Pro right tackle Tristan Wirfs was switching to the left side. Many offensive linemen have unsuccessfully attempted this switch in the past. There was no guarantee Wirfs would look as good on the left side as he did on the right. Could he pull it off?

2. After attempting a similar switch last year, formerly benched left guard Luke Goedeke was going to attempt to switch back to his college position of right tackle this year. Could Goedeke give even passable play?

3. Rookie Cody Mauch was going to attempt to do what Goedeke failed at last year. Move from a small school level of competition where he played tackle on one side of the ball to the NFL as a guard on the other side of the ball. Would Mauch be able to make so many transitions simultaneously?

4. After being cut by the Chargers, left guard Matt Feiler came to Tampa Bay on a very cheap deal to turn back the clock as the Bucs left guard. Would Feiler be able to deliver play more in-line with his 2019-2021 seasons rather than his disappointing 2022 campaign?

Even with the injury to Jensen the one area on the line the Bucs should have felt comfortable about having a baseline of expectation about was center. Since Jensen was lost during training camp last year his backup, Robert Hainsey, wound up playing all 18 games (including the Bucs’ playoff loss to the Cowboys).

Hainsey’s play last year was solid overall and good at times. It was good enough that the chances he would be the weak link on a unit that is a weak link system were much lower than almost every other position along the offensive line. Per Pro Football Focus, Hainsey’s 66.7 overall grade ranked him 13th among the 31 qualified centers last year. And his 73.0 pass blocking grade ranked sixth among that same group.

Hainsey Has Been Decidedly Bad To Start Season

Fast forward to today and the questions regarding the offensive line seem to be sorting themselves out…sort of. There is a healthy dose of the 1966 Sergio Leone spaghetti western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” to be applied to the Bucs offensive line. The Good has been the play of Wirfs, Mauch and Goedeke. All three have been solid in pass protection. Especially against the blitz-heavy scheme of the Vikings in Week 1. You could also throw the pass protection as a whole into the “Good” category. Through these first two weeks quarterback Baker Mayfield has only been sacked once.

Bucs RG Cody Mauch, C Robert Hainsey, LG Matt Feiler and QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

As for the “Bad,” Feiler has been up and down to begin the 2023 season. In Week 1 he played well. Week 2, not so much. The aggregate of his play is average to be fair, which is surely what the Bucs were hoping for when they signed him to a one year, $2.5 million contract. 

But the “Ugly” is most certainly owned by Hainsey. In many ways the switch to Canales’ scheme should have been a boon for him in closing the gap between him and Jensen in terms of level of play. The mid zone scheme Canales employs asks for more lateral movement and requires less size and strength than the duo-based playbook of Leftwich. While undersized at 306 pounds, his speed, explosive and agility scores were above the 50th percentile coming out of Notre Dame in 2021.

The results have been far from that supposition. Hainsey has look lost at times in the run game, often picking up the wrong assignment or getting blown up into the backfield killing cutback opportunities.

To show an example of issues with his assignments I will turn your attention to the first offensive play of the game. While Canales’ system is predicated on the mid zone lateral run concept, he hasn’t been afraid to mix things up with duo, pin and pull, or as in the case of this play – crunch. Let me quickly try to lay out the concept for the blocking on this run call. Tight end Cade Otton is going to motion from the outside towards the boundary back to the line.

Once the ball is snapped, he is going to flow back behind the right side of the line for a wham block on the initially uncovered 3T defensive tackle. That surprise is going to be coupled with a trap block by right guard Mauch on the backside nose tackle. With right tackle Goedeke down blocking the left defensive end and left guard Feiler sealing the backside end the Bucs should have all four of the defensive linemen and two-thirds of the six-man box Chicago presented covered.

This gives Bucs’ running back Rachaad White a clear lane through the right side “B” gap and not one, but two offensive linemen climbing to engage the two linebackers Chicago has left to defend the run. Wirfs should climb to the Mike linebacker while Hainsey should climb to the “Sam” backer on the play side. Now let’s look and see how the play unfolds.

Everyone performs their assignment well. Even Otton, tasked with whamming a defensive tackle and overall being a poor blocker, himself executes well. The whole thing plays out beautifully. Well…not the whole thing. Hainsey climbs to the mike rather than the sam. This leaves T.J. Edwards unblocked with the run flowing straight to him. He is able to bring down Rachaad White with ease. Instead of White being one-on-one with Bears safety Jaquan Brisker ten yards down the field with a chance for a huge gain, Edwards stops the run for a minimal two-yard gain.

Hainsey Has Struggled In Pass Protection As Well

Now remember I highlighted that last year Hainsey’s real strength was in pass protection where he graded out as one of the best centers in the league. This may be the “Tom Brady” affect. Brady has long made bad offensive linemen look average and average linemen look great. Most of that is due to his electric time to throw, routinely one of the lowest marks in the league. With Brady getting the ball out in lightning-quick fashion his offensive linemen didn’t have to sustain their blocks as long as their league-wide contemporaries had to.

Bucs RG Cody Mauch, C Robert Hainsey, LG Matt Feiler and QB Kyle Trask – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

In 2022, Brady took it to another level averaging a league-leading 2.3 seconds on his average time to throw. Contrast that with this year where Mayfield is tied for 17th with an average time to throw of 2.85 seconds. 17th isn’t bad, but that’s over a half-second of extra time his line has to protect for him. For an offensive lineman that can be an eternity. For Hainsey it may be that time has fully stopped. Take a look at the very next play following that missed crunch run.

Now, not to just single out Hainsey on this one, there was a lot of bad on this play. Feiler is also complicit with the pressure given up on Mayfield. And for his part this would be the one turnover-worthy play on his jacket for the first two weeks. But Hainsey just flat out watches Andrew Billings adjust his pass rush to come back at him and…just turns his head away. This allows Billings to swim through Hainsey to get to Mayfield.

The Assignment Just Got Tougher For The Bucs Center

Bucs RT Luke Goedeke, OL Robert Hainsey and LT Tristan Wirfs – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Hainsey has to get better, and quick. Not just because he has been bad. But because he has been bad against average-at-best competition. Billings is a decent tackle. And the week before against Dean Lowry and Harrison Phillips he faced a good pair of interior players. But the competition will spike this week on Monday Night Football as Hainsey has to face off against Jordan Davis, Jalen Carter, Fletcher Cox and Milton Williams.

Cox may be close to 33 years old now, but he is still dangerous. Over the past two seasons he has notched just under 90 pressures and 13 sacks. To give Bucs fans some context, their beloved nose tackle Vita Vea has 76 and 12 respectively over the same time frame.

Davis is a mountain of a man with athleticism oozing out of every pore. While he failed to record a sack in 2022, he already has two this season and will present a unique challenge for Hainsey in the run game. Meanwhile, Carter has launched out of the gates his rookie season with 11 pressures (including eight! against New England in week one) and a sack through his first two games as a pro.

jalen carter hit the ground running in his first game against new england. had a handful of pressures and a sack pic.twitter.com/Z37L606QR5

— charles (“you look good” – andy reid) mcdonald (@FourVerts) September 14, 2023

To take the easy way out to close this…