How The Buccaneers Can Beat The Bears

The Buccaneers are on the verge of salvaging what was once a completely lost season. Beating the Bears would go a long way to getting back in the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, this will also be their toughest opponent. The Bears represent a formidable challenge against the best of teams. For the Bucs to beat them, they have to be at the top of their game.

On defense, it’s just an abundance of weapons. Luther Burden, Rome Odunze, Colston Loveland, even Khalif Raymond has been contributing. While not the best group of ball catchers, their head coach in Ben Johnson does a great job of scheming his guys open. Oh and also the QB is pretty good at his job. Caleb Williams is the best QB the Bucs will ace the rest of the year with Lamar out. He is very good. The thing that the Bucs have to make sure to do is keep him in the pocket and not let him create outside.

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I have raved constantly about how good the secondary is. And I think they will continue to do so. But I think Ben Johnson will force them into match-ups that don’t benefit them. That’s just a testament to Ben Johnson as an offensive coach. I also think LBs will have a hard time against the TEs. The Bucs defense has to dictate how the Bears play. If they play Ben Johnson’s game, they will lose because he is nigh unbeatable at it.

For the Bucs offense, they will unfortunately have to throw the ball. They will be getting Egbuka back, which should help, but he doesn’t solve all the issues. Not even close really. But throwing the ball isn’t just to avoid the wrath of Jeffrey Simmons. It’s because they need to take advantage of the Bears’ terrible secondary. They have a top 8 defense in points allowed, but they have had some pretty bad secondary play. Baker and his wideouts need to take advantage of that. They can’t run the ball forty times and get over 300+ yards on the ground with Simmons in the middle. They have to adapt, which means Baker has to do more than block down field.

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Considering the Bucs defense and lack of offense, this could be another ugly game. That would actually benefit them considering they have excelled at winning ugly as of late. But if the Bears offense gets off to a hot start, the offense will have to play catch up. I don’t know if they can. If the defense can hold down the Bears and force them into 3rd and longs, they have a chance. This is also dependent of the Bucs’ offense functioning when they can’t run the ball every play.