Tampa Bay vs. Washington: Buccaneers Get a Slippery, Costly Win

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have let some games slip away from them this season.

Sunday they slipped into one.

That's the good news.

The good news is that with overtime staring them in their rain-soaked faces, Hunter Smith was kind enough to let the snap on the tying point-after squish through his fingertips, then Graham Gano got squashed and the Bucs went home with that nail-biter of a 17-16 victory over the lowly Washington Redskins.

The bad news is, well, really bad. Gerald McCoy was taken to the locker room with a little less than four minutes left in the first quarter. He would return with his arm in a sling, and if you believe what Raheem Morris tells us, the first-round draft pick is lost for the season with a torn bicep.

Just what this team needed, a luck-out win that took them to 8-5, but yet another valuable player is gone, as McCoy will most likely join Jeff Faine, Aqib Talib and Cody Grimm on injured reserve.

Thank goodness Josh Freeman is still upright and once again played one whale of a ball game. No doubt he will be remembered for that two-point conversion that saw him steam-roll his way into the end zone with two Redskin defenders doing everything they could to stop him.

"Josh Freeman—he's a big-time quarterback," Raheem Morris said after watching the rain-soaked proceedings.

Big time? Nice understatement, Raheem.

Morris also said he didn't feel lucky after this win.

He should have.

A good team would have been up 21-0 before the Bucs could blink, but these Redskins of Daniel Snyder have found new ways to display their propensity for ineptitude, particularly Gano, who was nice enough to miss those early point-blank field goals—one of which boinked off the upright.

The Bucs did their part to keep it close, like that fumble at the Redskins goal line on first down that made us wonder if that touchdown might have made this a whole lot easier.

But it seems nothing comes easy for this team, and the last three games won't be easy now that the defense is McCoy-less.

Arrelious Benn had a breakout day with his four catches for 122 yards, and that's good news for Freeman, who did well behind that depleted offensive line.

Efforts like these have gotten the Bucs noticed.

The entire Fox studio crew noticed.

Jimmy Johnson was impressed. So was Terry Bradshaw, same for Howie Long and Michael Strahan as well.

With Green Bay's loss to Detroit on Sunday, Johnson believes the Bucs and Giants will battle down to the wire for a wild card spot in the playoffs. "Tampa and the Giants are fighting for that wild card," was Johnson's Sunday assessment.

"I'm ecstatic," is how Morris put it.

The Bucs got this win with a dwindling roster of stars.

"It speaks volumes for guys stepping up," Morris said.

And that's exactly what it did.