A lot of things went wrong for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against the Atlanta Falcons. But if there's any one unit to blame among a slew of errors, the defense is probably a good place to start.
The Buccaneers gave up 502 passing yards to Kirk Cousins, who helped lead the Falcons to a highly improbable comeback with under two minutes to go bleeding into overtime. The defense gave up the middle of the field quite considerably, and one of the reasons that happened was due to an overall poor performance by linebacker K.J. Britt.
Britt is one of Tampa Bay's starting linebackers, but he got more playing time on Thursday when LB SirVocea Dennis headed to IR during the week. That playtime didn't translate to performance, as Britt lost a few assignments in coverage and committed some costly penalties — he graded out at an awful 38.3 by Pro Football Focus' metrics.
Todd Bowles was asked about Britt's struggles the day after the game, and while he had a few words of encouragement for the young linebacker, his overall messaging wasn't too positive when asked about how he did playing more snaps than usual.
"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 said. "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.”
It didn't get better for Britt, as when asked whether or not Bowles will interpolate more linebackers in the future — such as J.J Russell — Bowles seemed very open to the idea. And while he continues to praise Britt throughout his answers, he specifically addresses areas like communication and speed that need to get better on the defense, two things that Britt is responsible for.
“We’ll see. I mean, we’re confident in K.J. [Britt] but at the same time, we need to make more tackles," Bowles said. "I thought our zone drops and our tackling weren’t very good and that’s where we kind of got behind the eight ball.”
Tampa Bay will look to have a bounce-back game against the New Orleans Saints in 10 days, and when they do, Britt may not be as much a part of the equation as he has been in the past. It's one change of many that Todd Bowles may need to look at to increase speed and communication, as they'll hope that the Falcons didn't give the rest of the league a blueprint to beat their defense going forward.
