Had a BIIIIIG thing written out, lost it all because my screen refreshed for no good reason. Yowsa. So, I lost my play-by-play notes and had to go off memory to get these observations.
1. Seth McKinney made dramatic improvement in the last few games from what he looked like against the Bears. DRAMATIC. One on one assignments were not a problem for him in general. That's very odd.
2. Jeno James also appears to have worked out a few kinks.
3. Vernon Carey is not as good a RT as he is a LT, curiously enough he can actually struggle with the bullrush of LDEs, and he is not as inspiring a run blocker as he is a pass protector, at least not yet.
4. Damion McIntosh proved he can do a lot of the same things Vernon can do in the pass protection game (not all of them, he's not a black hole like IHOP is), and he's a better run blocker, that I can tell.
5. Randy McMichael deserves a medal for the number of times he took on a defensive end all by himself in run and pass blocking, and just flat out DOMINATED. He owned Simeon Rice. It wasn't even funny. All night. Randy was the most improved player from Game 3 to Game 4...although considering the game he had in Game 3, that's not surprising.
6. Ronnie's fumble was his fault. He ran the same up the gut play that Ricky gained good ground on the first drive, was matched up 1on1 with safety Phillips just like Ricky was, but Ricky used his body maneuvering to get good yards after meeting Phillips, while Ronnie merely dove and laid in for the hit leaving the ball exposed to Phillips' helmet. Rookie mistake. Otherwise, he's a good powerful runner, and his weaknesses in vision did not show up tonight. He did muff a pass on a screen play that was called back for defensive holding. Obviously the rook had some jitters to shake out.
7. Ricky Williams still does not look like the Ricky Williams of old, but he is still cat quick, uses his body well even though his body isn't as dominating and physically powerful as it once was, and he has remarkable vision. He and Ronnie will be dangerous together, but it may be hard for Ronnie to find his own ways of outshining the crowd with Ricky in the game too.
8. I like some of the plays Linehan has in the arsenal. The end-around used by Welker & Chambers that worked twice was the same that we used against the Jags with success I believe. The "90 flip" play that Ricky ran for a good amount on in the first drive was one we used against the Jags with great success (remember the rookie CB that Ricky faked out of his pants?). The long plays are working; the plays are there to be had, and when Gus gets on the right page with the WRs they will start becoming completions. What is important here is that we do not make another quarterback switch because that will only take us two steps back in making these long plays a success. Our allegiance for picking a QB shouldn't be to fairness, it should be to getting the maximum production out of the QB. Right now that means continuing to allow Frerotte to air it out with the first team until he feels out exactly how far he needs to throw David Boston on the fly pattern, or Bryan Gilmore, or Chambers, or Booker, or Welker, etc. Part of the reason AJ Feeley has such a better completion rate is because the guy doesn't throw those long deep shots the way Frerotte does. If you go back into a shell with those deep shots, we're back to the same offense we basically ran all last season. Do you want that? I don't, and I'm willing to sacrifice a little completion percentage to get it.
9. The offense had something going on two drives during the first quarter, but Ronnie Brown coughed up the ball on one of them. That drive was going to score points, and I don't think it was going to be a field goal. The backfield of Ricky & Ronnie together looked dangerous. Imagine the same end-around play that Chambers & Welker ran, except with Brown barreling down the field just as fast except with 230 pounds of steam behind him. That could have happened, Ricky was the one-back and Ronnie the motioning slot man playing the same position Welker & Chambers ran the end-around from.
10. JT made Anthony Davis his b!tch and pimp slapped him aside on more than one occasion, and also proved he's better than Simeon Rice. Or at least, he was last night. Simeon got dominated by Randy McMichael but when the Bucs tried to have Becht do the same thing, JT blazed by Becht as if he was standing still and sacked Griese on a short 3 step drop. You're not supposed to get sacks on a 3 step drop, that's why they designed them that way.
11. Kevin Carter continues to be our most valuable addition on defense. He was BORN for playing LDE in the 3-4 technique. If you see the 3-4 used on 50% of our plays or more this season (and I suspect you will), you can thank Kevin Carter for that. He's like Richard Seymour out there. He's dominant. Can't say enough. JT had a great day, but Carter is consistently collapsing things more than JT is.
12. Reggie Howard will start at CB this season. Say what? I'm sorry, but after embarrassing himself against the Bears he has been our most improved defensive secondary player. He tackles well, he seems born for zone play where he gets to read the QB's movements, he peels off his assignments and flies to the ball, and he's been staying up with receivers deep lately. The guy has flat out outplayed Travis Daniels if you ask me. Daniels may know this defense, but he has a thing or two to learn about the abilities of WRs and offensive schemes in the NFL. Not to knock Daniels, he's done extremely well too, but Howard has shown the kind of promise that leads me to believe he can literally replace Surtain in his role as starting CB and slot man in the nickel package. He can blitz, he can tackle, he can play zone, he can keep up deep, he can read the QB's eyes, and he can catch the ball. He has it all and it is showing. Has anyone else been waiting for the glaring weaknesses in our secondary to start hurting us in first team play yet? You know why it hasn't? Yup. Howard.
13. Sam Madison's days as a Dolphin are numbered. He's never been asked to be responsible for making plays on the ballcarrier the way he is in this defense, and he's failing at it. We've always known he's a pedestrian tackler, but now we see why Bill Parcells use to have little respect for Madison and use to send runners right toward his position on the outside. He will only be a Dolphin until we find a suitable replacement. Whether Will Poole turns out to be that replacement or not, I don't know. For now, he's still great at covering people, and Saban will use that believe me.
14. Channing Crowder had a decent game, but I thought Spragan and Seau were both better. I'm just sayin...I know we have a lot of hopes for Crowder, but he's not there yet. Spragan, Seau, and Thomas ARE there. Channing will be eventually.
15. Holliday continues to perform excellently, like a poor man's Kevin Carter. And Tractor Traylor does too, but we need Chester to get back so that he can give him rest every now and then otherwise Traylor will wear down before the mid-year mark.
16. Yeremiah Bell may have played himself out of the starting lineup with his poor technique against the Bucs. In coverage and in tackling, he had poor technique. On one play he should have helped Crowder put a contain on Caddy who was running out right, instead he cut Crowder off and tried to tackle Caddy, who broke the tackle and got about 6 more yards. On that Galloway deep cross that resulted in a touchdown pass called back by holding, Bell displayed extremely poor technique in picking up Galloway's coverage on the deep cross. I actually thought he was going to trip over himself and fall down it was so poor. Schulters, on the other hand, seemed to play well in this game...we could see a move very soon.
17. Did I mention that Randy McMichael deserves a medal for this game?
Did I mention that Ron Jaworski deserves a good punch in the throat? Consistently called McMichael "Randy McDaniel" and as always, has been a BLATANT apologist for every player on the Bucs' roster. I love how he'll talk up that Galloway TD on the deep cross called back by a "stupid holding penalty" all day long, except if you look at the tape Kevin Carter knocked the RT flat on his face and had the RT not reached out his hands and outright TRIPPED Carter, then that ball never would have gotten out of Griese's hands unless it was a fumble. YEESH.
18. Also, the Bucs played their 2nd string a little early for my tastes. I thought they'd have had an agreement in place on when to take them out. Nope. By the time AJ Feeley played, that wasn't the Bucs' 2nd stringers out there in the secondary, those were the 3rd stringers and the guys who will never see an NFL roster. Sorry to take the wind out of your sails AJ, but that TD pass to Farmer came against Blue Adams, Ronyell Whitaker, and Kalvin Pearson. Ouch.
