Buccaneers Fall to Bills 23-19 in Preseason Finale

This was not a good game, especially for the Buccaneers defense. They couldn’t stop some practice squad player at Quarterback. And he absolutely torched the pathetic excuse of a secondary. With that said, there were positives to talk about, especially on offense.

For me at least, the most surprising thing to see was a good return game for the Bucs. They were bursting through the seams on kickoffs and punts. You might think this would be because of Tez Johnson, but it was actually Kameron Johnson and Josh Williams providing most the energy there. They had a lot of huge gains, but the biggest one brought the Bucs to the Bills 38 because of Johnson.

But speaking of Tez, he had a fantastic night. He caught all 8 of his targets for 58 yards and a td. He just looked faster than nearly everyone on the field. It seemed like Josh Grizzard designed plays deliberately short of the sticks for Tez just to get him into space because he knew Tez would break the tackles. And he was usually right. Also he had a cool ass flip in the end zone. If Johnson wasn’t a lock before, he now looks locked in as WR4.

There were really only two bright spots on defense. Bryce Hall had quite a few pass break-ups and looked good in coverage. I was excited for him last year, so hopefully he can stay be part of the rotation behind the starters. And the other guy was Elijah Roberts. He pushed the pocket several times and got one of two sacks in the game.

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Outside their performances, burn this whole defensive tape. The Buccaneers run defense was horrid all night and more alarming, they kept missing tackles. It had rained pretty hard before the game, but the fact that they as the home team were the only ones struggling is really not good. Receivers were also open the whole game. The thing I was most disappointed by was Nick Jackson didn’t look as good as he had the other two games. He had several missed tackles and just looked average. I hope he can provide good depth at LB (God knows we need it), but that was not tonight.

This is one of those games you kinda just have to disregard the tape. No starters played, so that obviously affected the performance. The offense was fine with both Trask and Bazeluk playing solid, but the defense didn ‘t force a turnover and looked completely lost. With the regular season coming up, we have some fringe guys that definitely solidified a spot. Josh Williams did the most this game to show he belonged as RB4. Those cutdowns will be soon, so watch out for it.