The Tampa Bay Buccaneers did a lot of things wrong during their 36-30 loss to the Atlanta Falcons. From penalties to missed tackles to the offense wilting in the second half. This was a total collapse and a total team loss.
One of the most glaring issues for the Buccaneers was the fact that the center of the Bucs secondary seemed to be wide open the entire game. A huge part of why the middle of the field was linebacker K.J. Britt. Head coach Todd Bowles spoke to this following the game.
“It was our normal stuff that we normally run but at the same time, you know, we want to have more speed on the field at certain times. K.J is a very good zone player but at times we want to have some speed guys on the field and the communication has to be better, especially with the safeties,” Bowles stated. “When we lost Jordan [Whitehead], we lost some of the communication aspect of it and then we just missed some drops and missed some tackles.”
Bowles didn’t rule out making a change at the linebacker position,
“We’ll see. I mean, we’re confident in K.J. [Britt] but at the same time, we need to make more tackles,” Bowles stated. “I thought our zone drops and our tackling weren’t very good and that’s where we kind of got behind the eight ball.”
Britt definitely needs to improve on his pass coverage as well as his penchant for committing untimely penalties. But it isn’t just those two issues, Britt needs to step up his entire game, proof by him grading out at 38.3 by Pro Football Focus‘ metrics against Atlanta.
