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Amid Tom Brady’s relief over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers snapping a three-game losing streak, he didn’t let his team off the hook for performance issues.
“If you want to be a great team, you gotta be way better than average so correcting our mistakes, improving our effort, which probably is the most embarrassing part of our team is our effort level on gameday, and that’s something we better fix,” Brady told Jim Gray on the “Let’s Go!” podcast on Monday, November 7.
Brady highlighted the team’s effort as “most embarrassing part” of the three-game losing streak and the game-long struggles in Week 9 before a last-second comeback. Brady engineered a 6-play, 60-yard drive in 35 seconds to throw a game-winning touchdown pass against the Los Angeles Rams. The Bucs offense looked anemic before that final drive of the 16-13 win on Sunday, November 7, which greatly resembled the offense that mustered a touchdown per game over the past four weeks.
“There’s only so deep of a hole that you can dig, and you know, if you dig yourself too deep of a hole then you got no shot coming out of it,” Brady told Gray. “The best teams start playing well around Thanksgiving. That’s because you basically figured out what you are and what you need to do and there’s definitely some things we do well, but there’s a lot of things we don’t do well.”
What Do the Bucs Do Well?
Tampa Bay has a short list of things going well.
Kicker Ryan Succop going 22-24 on field goals kept the Bucs in tight games during the first nine weeks. The Bucs defense still ranks in the top five for points allowed and passing yards allowed per game. Brady has 10 touchdown passes versus one interception for the best touchdown-interception ratio among starters in the league.
However, the low touchdown numbers don’t bode well this late in the season. Tampa Bay’s running game remains sluggish at 60.7 yards per game. The Bucs also own the third-worst red zone efficiency in the league at 44% for touchdowns.
That’s just some of the offense’s problems, and defense has its own set of issues. Once a dominant unit against the run, the Bucs defense turned into the 10th-worst run defense this season with 125.2 yards allowed per game.
Tampa Bay turned the corner defensively against the Rams with 68 rushing yards allowed amid 206 total yards allowed. Bucs head coach Todd Bowles liked the progress.
“It was a hard-fought game. It was complementary football. It was a team win,” Bowles told reporters afterward. “It’s a lot easier to fly overseas after you win a game than when you lose a game. We’ve just got to start putting them together.”
Brady Excited for Germany, Going for 5-5 Mark
Brady previously expressed hope of the team getting 5-5 in Germany against the Seattle Seahawks during his podcast on October 31. He noted “then the whole season is ahead of us” with a win.
“We’re playing a great team in Seattle,” Brady told Gray on Monday. “They’re first place in their division. We’re tied for first place in ours and it’s a big challenge because, you know, to fly across the ocean like that, new time zone, it’s a 9:30 [a.m.] eastern kickoff. It’ll have its challenges.”
“The weather’s gonna be a little cool, but we’re playing in this very, very cool arena [Allianz Arena] where Bayern Munich plays, kind of the country’s top soccer team, and it looks amazing in pictures,” Brady added.
“And look, I mean the chance to go across to another country, play a sport that I love, I have heard there’s 3 million ticket requests for 67,000 seats,” Brady continued. “So the place is gonna be rocking and if it’s anything like what I see in those German Bundesliga games this is gonna be one of the epic games that we’ve ever played in. So I’m super excited.”
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