We barely played our starters in pre-season & it took them pretty much the entire 1st half (& the 1st series of the 2nd half) to get the rust off. New England has a system of getting the ball out quickly on short routes so the pass rush can't get to the QB & they abused our rookie CB that missed a coverage change signal (to go from Zone to Man-to-Man). Our tackling sucked and 5 yd plays turned into 15+ yard gains... especially on 3rd downs. Our backup RG committed a stupid holding penalty that made our final FG attempt harder & then our rookie long snapper snapped the ball low, our crappy punter couldn't handle it cleanly & placed it in the wrong spot & our kicker shanked it left... otherwise we'd be talking about a Cardinals victory. We played really poorly & still almost pulled off the win.
Looking on to Tampa Bay, it's obvious that Winston & Mike Evans have a lot of talent, but I'm not seeing much beyond them that scares me. Doug Martin averaged 3.2 yds/carry against Atlanta & our run defense has been really good the last few years. Vincent Jackson has great height for a WR, but he only had 2 catches for 18 yards last week. TB seems to move the ball around to a lot of receivers with 8 different guys making catches last week & Doug Martin can catch the ball out of the backfield. Winston can be a rushing threat, but he seems to like being more of a pocket passer & holds onto the ball a lot longer than New England QBs do so I'm expecting our pass rush to get more pressure this week. Winston has a really strong arm & good touch on his passes, but I don't think he has the best collection of receivers around him (or TEs either).
Anything else I'm missing about Tampa's offense?
