Tampa Bay Buccaneers Blown out by New England Patriots: Post-Mortem

First and foremost, this preseason football disclaimer:

Things are never as good as they seem or as bad as they appear to be.

With that firmly in mind, things weren't as good for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as they seemed last week in Kansas City and hopefully weren't as bad as they appeared to be in Thursday night's 31-14 loss to New England that helped us Remember The Alamo.

As they might say over at Special Operations Command at MacDill AFB, this was a rapid, surgical strike.

It was Tom Brady at his best, overwhelming an opponent that was not ready to handle an elite quarterback who was simply being, well, for lack of better words, elite.

You don't have to be a veteran coach in the NFL to see what the problem was out there on that nice grass at Raymond James Stadium. Football is a game determined in the trenches and the sad fact was that the Buccaneers were simply battered to the bone up front, both on offense and defense.

When the Buccaneer offense got out there, it was pretty easy to see that New England crowded the box, plugged every gap and went after Josh Freeman and LeGarrette Blount with "extreme prejudice", as they say on the battlefield.

The Buccaneer offensive line was overrun, out-manned as Coach Raheem Morris said at the half, they were "out-physicaled."

That made for a really, really lousy night for Freeman. We'll forego the stats, you may review them if you wish.

On defense it was a pure Ugly Betty episode.

Suffice to say that Brady was simply being Brady, and he does put the "e" in "elite" when it comes to signal calling and field generalship. He took his guys to touchdowns on four of the first five P-men possessions.

Most disappointing was that the New England running attack body-slammed the Buc defense.

Consider these stats:

Diminutive Danny Woodhead, all 5-8 (maybe), 190-pounds of him (soaking wet) went for 63 yards on five carries. BenJarvus Green-Ellis (it's a great name) put up 51 yards on 11 carries and the rookie third-round draft pick, Stevan Ridley out of LSU, looked like he was back in Baton Rouge running all over someone like Louisiana Tech. He had 84 yards on 14 carries. Yikes!

Now doing the quick math, well, that's nearly 200 yards (198 to be exact) on 30 combined carries for an average well above six per touch.

Note to Raheem Morris:  You'll have to fix that.

The good news?

That's easy. New guy Michael Koenen punted the poo-poo out of that football. He had four and averaged nearly 52 yards, with one that went 59. That will serve this team well when it starts to count in September.

Robert Malone looked like last year's punting game. Yuck.

You want penalties?

There were 10, count 'em, 10 in the first half. That's No. 1 on the list of "10 ways to lose football games".

Donald Penn and Ted Larsen won't have a good time watching this game video.

For that matter, no one at One Buccaneer Place will.

Best moment of the night? Mason Foster knocked the Ocho out of Chad Ochocinco. Of course in this kinder, gentler NFL, that's simply not allowed anymore. No great shots, someone might get hurt out there.

That's okay Mason, keep up the good work. Barrett Ruud would have wiffed if he tried that.

So its' back to the drawing board.

It's a regular schedule now, one practice a day with Tuesdays off.

Hopefully that's enough time to get ready for the Detroit Lions.

News Note:  The Bucs announced on Friday that Roy Miller has a partially torn MCL that will require surgery. His status for the opening game is uncertain.