The Tampa Bay Buccaneers head into Thursday Night Football with a short week, a road trip to AT&T Stadium and a simple problem to solve: they need their first win of the year, and the Dallas Cowboys are not exactly the kind of opponent that hands those out easily.
Dallas comes in at 2-2, and even with some uneven play and a defense that has looked questionable at times, this is still a team that can make life miserable if Tampa Bay doesn’t get a few key areas right. For the Buccaneers, the path to a win starts with three things they have to do well.
First, the run game has to be better. Tampa Bay had a rough time on the ground in Week 4 against the Green Bay Packers, averaging 3.8 yards per carry on designed runs with an EPA/rush of -0.036 and a success rate of 44.0%. Jalon Daniels carried a lot of that load with 55 rushing yards, but that wasn’t enough to make the offense feel balanced.
If the Bucs want Daniels to be in a position to succeed in his second-ever NFL start, they need more from the backs around him. That could mean finding a better way to get Kenny Gainwell rolling after he finished with fewer than two yards per carry last week, or giving Sean Tucker a larger role after he logged three carries and a touchdown. Tampa Bay may need to win this one in a shootout, and that gets a lot harder if the ground game never shows up.
The second issue is pressure. Dallas has the kind of passing attack that can shred a defense if the quarterback has time, with George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb forming what may be the best wideout duo in the NFL and Jake Ferguson adding another dangerous option up the middle. Dak Prescott is running the show, and if Tampa Bay wants any real chance of slowing that offense down, it has to disrupt him.
Prescott’s EPA/play when pressured is -0.21, per SumerSports, and he’s gone 23 of 48 for one touchdown, one interception and six sacks in those situations. The formula is obvious: get to him early, get him off his spot and make the rest of that passing game work harder than it wants to.
The problem is that Tampa Bay has not been doing that nearly enough. Its pressure rate is 26.5%, dead last in the NFL, and it also ranks 25th in sacks.
That has to change on Thursday night.
The third key is making plays downfield. Tampa Bay’s air yards per completion sits at 3.39 yards, worst in the NFL, and the gap between that number and the Falcons’ 4.03 yards in 31st is still sizable. This isn’t a team that’s being conservative with its overall passing profile - it ranks 14th in average depth of target - but it has not connected on deep shots.
That problem showed up again in Week 4, when Daniels made his first start. The Bucs posted just 1.53 air yards per completion, which ranked 31st out of 32 teams, and their 4.19 ADOT also ranked 31st.
If Dallas is going to put points on the board, Tampa Bay has to answer, and throws behind the line of scrimmage aren’t going to keep pace. The Buccaneers need more intermediate and deep production if they want to leave Dallas with a win.
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