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It is hard to imagine the Tampa Bay Buccaneers playing any worse than their showing against the New Orleans Saints in Week 9. Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians called the loss “shocking” given how he saw the team perform in the practices leading up to Sunday Night Football.
“It was shocking,” Arians admitted, per Buccaneers.com. “To watch us practice, the way we practiced all week, the confidence we had coming in…we have to go back in look in the mirror as coaches, players, everybody.”
Tampa has now had two of their worst performances of the season against their NFC South foes in New Orleans. After the game, Arians gave credit to the Saints while being blunt about how poor the Buccaneers played.
“You have to give New Orleans credit, they kicked our a– in every phase,” Arians said.
Brady Threw 3 Interceptions & No Touchdowns Against the Saints
The Saints were able to consistently get pressure on Tom Brady, and the Buccaneers quarterback struggled throughout the night. Brady threw for 209 yards, three interceptions and no touchdowns in the team’s blowout loss. The Bucs quarterback admitted there is “little margin for error” when playing against the Saints.
“It’s about playing better and execution and we all have to do our jobs a lot better,” Brady noted, per Buccaneers.com. “When you play good teams there’s little margin for error. They’ve been a great team for a long time. They’ve got a lot of good players. If we’re going to beat them we’ve got to play a lot better than we did tonight.”
The Buccaneers Have Struggled in Primetime Games
When you sign Tom Brady, it means your team is going to have a lot more primetime television matchups. There has been a limited sample size, but so far the Buccaneers have looked like a different team in all of their primetime matchups. Arians admitted the team has “stunk” in these marquee games and wants the Bucs to examine if there is any correlation with these poor performances under the lights.
“That’s one of the things we have to look at because that’s what we just addressed in the locker room,” Arians noted, via Buccaneers.com. “We have stunk in those games. We won one of them but we should have won the other one but we didn’t. This one we just basically handed it to them.”
Brady emphasized the need for consistency, regardless of when the game kicks off.
“Yeah, we need to perform better at every time,” Brady explained in his postgame press conference. “One o’clock, four o’clock, eight o’clock, Monday night, Sunday night. Doesn’t matter, they are going to schedule the game, and we are going to go out there and play. I don’t think it’s anything magical that’s happening. As players, we got to prepare harder, got to execute better. There’s no excuses for what it is. It’s a poor performance by a team that’s got a lot ahead of it.”
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