Good Lovie Gone Bad: Buccaneers Need Lovie Smith at His Best
What the Tampa Bay Buccaneers need Thursday night, and for the rest of the season, what they really need, is Good Lovie.
They have had enough of Bad Lovie in the first two weeks. Bad Lovie is predictable and conservative to a fault on both sides of the ball. Good Lovie is a detail-oriented franchise architect whose teams beat you with execution, not novelties. Bad Lovie does the same things over and over again and hopes they start working.
Lovie Smith can still lead the 0-2 Buccaneers to the playoffs this year. The NFC South is in disarray, with the New Orleans Saints squabbling on the sidelines, the Atlanta Falcons flip-flopping between amazing and unwatchable and Cam Newton suddenly leading his troops like Erwin Rommel.
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The Buccaneers have the talent to compete under these conditions. But they need the best of their Lovie, the coach who tempers his traditionalism with an open mind, gets the most from the whole roster and takes an actual risk every few weeks or so.
They need the Lovie Smith of 2005-06. So far, they have seen too much of the 2011-12 Smith, the coach who ran out of ideas and was then run out of Chicago.
Smith and his coordinators have coached down to their worst impulses so far this season. The results have been a pair of dreary losses to teams helmed by backup quarterbacks (Carolina Panthers and St. Louis Rams).
After a busy offseason that turned over the entire offensive roster and remade the defense in Smith’s Cover 2 image, the Bucs should be better. But some familiar Bad Lovie habits have held them back.
Conservative Offensive Play-Calling
Smith does not call offensive plays. Jeff Tedford is the coordinator, and quarterback coach Marcus Arroyo called plays in the Panthers game while Tedford recovered from surgery.
But whether Tedford, Arroyo, Mike Martz or Mike Tice is calling the shots, Lovie Smith offensive coordinators all start to become as dull as Ron Turner. It’s like when Jimi Hendrix was in Little Richard’s band: You can’t light your guitar on fire when you are only allowed to slap chords on "Long Tall Sally."
The Buccaneers’ conservative, predictable early-season game plans are obvious when we examine the first-down splits. The Buccaneers have run 19 times and attempted just nine passes on first downs when the score was within seven points this season. Some late-game daring when trailing 17-0 makes the overall first-down splits look more balanced (the split becomes 22 runs, 27 passes), but it is a game-situation illusion.
Eighteen of those first-down rushes netted a total of 34 yards (1.9 yards per carry); the other was a 54-yard fullback give to Jorvorskie Lane. Fifteen of those remaining 34 yards came on two fourth-quarter runs against the Rams, leaving 16 early-game Buccaneers series in which the offense always seemed to be facing 2nd-and-9.
Of the nine first-down passes in these close-game situations, seven can be classified as screens or tosses into the flat; none traveled more than 15 yards downfield in the air. The passes netted a total of 46 yards, 19 of them on a short throw to Bobby Rainey in the final seconds of the Rams game, and produced an interception and a lost fumble.
Opponents know what’s coming on first down and what is not: anything deep or daring. A team that is predictable on first down is predictable on every down, because it gets forced into obvious passing situations.
It does not take too much imagination to open up the Buccaneers' first-down play-calling, even if you allow for the fact that the offensive line is weak.
Josh McCown can run. How about some read-option wrinkles? Blazing rookie receiver Robert Herron has been limited to two short catches so far. Perhaps a reverse to break up all of those inside handoffs to the big backs?
When a fullback give is both a team’s most creative play and longest gain of the year, it shows a need for fresh ideas. A bottled-up offense is a sign of Bad Lovie at his worst.
Too Much Two-Deep
Smith was asked on a conference call before the Rams game if he still runs the same defensive scheme he used for a decade with the Chicago Bears.
"We’re not going to get too far away from what we believe in," he said. "Our same defense in some form we’ve played every year I’ve been in the league, so we’re not going to get away from that. But we have tweaked. The description 'Tampa 2' does not say who we are. We will occasionally play Cover 2, but we’re a lot more multiple than that."
In other words, coach reminded us that "Tampa 2" does not mean "the defense lines up with two safeties deep on every single play, then plays zone underneath with the middle linebacker covering the seam." The Buccaneers are indeed a lot more multiple than that. But they are not very multiple.
I charted the defensive "shell" formations for 58 plays against the Rams: every snap except a few goal-line plays. These were shells, or initial alignments, not actual defensive calls: I am not Matt Bowen and cannot break down 58 different defensive concepts on a Wednesday afternoon, but I can see where the safeties are standing at the snap.
Here is where they were against the Rams:
- Two safeties deep: 21 snaps
- One safety deep: 23 snaps
- Two deep, but one rolling to the line: 14 snaps
The rolling coverage was fairly predictable: The safety on the strong side of the offensive formation crashed the line, the other safety slid into the deep middle, usually when the Rams formation was particularly lopsided. As pre-snap tomfoolery goes, it’s pretty basic.
I began to know when it was coming while watching the film. Rams offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer probably had it sussed out.
Keep in mind that the Buccaneers were facing a third-string quarterback making his first start for a head coach and offensive coordinator who do not like to throw deep. That’s an awful lot of two-deep shell for Austin Davis and a Rams team that was often in the I-formation or a two-tight end set.
What are you going to do against Matt Ryan and Drew Brees?
The Cover 2 shell appears in some unlikely places. The Rams reached the red zone in the first quarter, and they used a little pre-snap motion to create a Weak-I formation.
Rams head coach Jeff Fisher said after the game that the Bucs "stacked" the line of scrimmage to force them to throw. But despite the personnel, formation and situation, the Bucs lined up with a seven-man box, a Wide 9 defender and two safeties 12 yards off the line.
St. Louis running back Zac Stacy powered for nine yards as the Bucs prepared for a pass to the end zone that was extremely unlikely to be thrown. The Rams scored a few plays later.
When the Bucs did rush the passer, we saw a lot of Smith’s signature A-gap blitzes: two linebackers over the center, with both crossing the center’s face at the snap or one dropping into coverage. Combine a double A-gap blitz with two deep safeties, and you get the Loviest defense possible.
The Bucs tried just such a combination late in the game against the Rams. Davis read it, knew the left safety would be occupied by the inside receiver and found Austin Pettis for a 27-yard reception to set up the game-winning field goal.
Lovie Smith does not believe in "zero" pressure plays, with no safeties deep. Fair enough. And yes, the Bucs did throw more at Davis than an empty shell of zone defenses; a quick scan of initial formations can be taken too far.
But imagine what New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick or a Ryan brother might throw at a third-stringer making his first start: shifting fronts, sneaky coverages, eight-man zones that look like seven-man blitzes before the snap.
Good Lovie was great in 2004, when the Cover 2 was king. Now, he may need more than tweaks if he doesn’t want his system to go bad.
Quarterback Comfort Zone
Josh McCown was an obscure over-30 third-string quarterback two years ago. When Lovie Smith needed a backup for Jay Cutler, he turned to Caleb Hanie.
When Smith got fed up with Hanie in 2012, he turned to Jason Campbell. When Smith left Chicago, McCown finally earned a promotion to the second string, and he enjoyed a brief late-season hot streak, helped along by some terrible defensive opponents.
Now, the 35-year-old is an uncontested starting quarterback. There’s no controversy, no pressure to turn to Mike Glennon (who threw 19 touchdown passes under incredibly difficult circumstances last year), no urgency to nurture a quarterback of the future behind a journeyman who is six months older than Drew Brees.
Does that make sense?
McCown’s longest pass after two games is a 29-yard throw to Mike Evans on the final play of the Rams loss. He is 2-of-6 on other "deep" passes, but deep for McCown has meant 19 and 24 yards so far.
There have been three interceptions and a pair of fumbles the Bucs recovered, including one notorious play in which McCown both fumbled and threw an interception. The Buccaneers are getting neither playmaking capability nor ball security from their quarterback right now.
Smith has always had terrible taste in quarterbacks, but at his best, Good Lovie knows when to make a move.
He promoted rookie Kyle Orton over Chad Hutchinson in 2005; Orton was shaky, but the Bears went 11-5. Lovie lingered far too long on Rex Grossman but had the sense to switch to Brian Griese after three games in 2007. Lovie later figured out that Orton was his best quarterback—a problem in its own right—and gave Orton back the starting job instead of getting stubborn about Griese, Grossman or pet projects like Chris Leak.
Good Lovie will soon figure out that McCown is a Griese (old security blanket who gets you nowhere) and Glennon is an Orton (C-plus prospect with a live arm and a chance to improve). Good Lovie—an empire builder and long-range thinker—knows that even if McCown has a little present left, he has no future.
But no quarterback will make a difference if Bad Lovie keeps lapsing into familiar habits. Smith claims that he and Tedford arrived with fresh ideas after a year away from the game. Thursday night would be a great time to see some of them.
Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report.
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