Buccaneers still dont look quite ready for January Ravens take a big step and more Week 15 insider notes

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Buccaneers still dont look quite ready for January Ravens take a big step and more Week 15 insider notes

Watching the struggle against the , all I could think about was, "This is not a team ready for January."Down 17-0 at halftime, the Bucs rallied to beat their NFC South foe 31-27 to move to 9-5 on the year and e sentially lock up a playoff spot.Apparently, Bruce Arians had the same thought."If we can play 30 minutes like that," Arians told his team after the game, "why the hell can't we play 60?"This has been the Bucs i sue all season long. Outside of the consecutive weeks against the and in Weeks 6 and 7, the Bucs have been unable to look like a conference-title-contending team Brandon Morrow Jersey for consecutive weeks. "We lost to the and the each by 3. Both of those games playing this way," Arians said in his postgame comments. "We're not going to beat those good teams playing this way. We've got to play better in the first half than we played today."He had conveniently left out the two shellackings at the hands of the . Their first matchup, in Week 1, went the way of New Orleans 34-23. Their second meeting in primetime was a 38-3 ma sacre that was a meaningle s field goal away from being a shutout. Neverthele s, the Bucs have indeed struggled in the first quarter. Of the 36 touchdowns Tampa's defense has allowed all Baez El Mago Jersey season, 12 of them have come in the first quarter. And of the 46 touchdowns Tampa's offense has scored this year, only eight have come in the first quarter. The Buccaneers have scored one first-quarter touchdown since Halloween.We gave a collective pa s to the Bucs to start Drew Smyly Jersey the season. needed an acclimation period. But they started 5-2 this season before signing and are 4-3 since. There's little to inspire one to believe these Bucs can beat the cla s of the NFCthe Rams, the Packers and the Saints with a healthy .Perhaps Brady still has magic left. Maybe playing all the top conference opponents already will benefit Tampa Bay come January. But the Bucs inability to string together a quality game, and then another quality game, is alarming enough. This was exactly the kind of game I wanted to see from the . Winning in the NFL is hard and I get that. But I would rather playoff teams look more like Buffalo on Saturday than the Packers. Baltimore was facing an overmatched opponent and didn't play down to the on either side of the ball. Sunday marked the first time since Week 5 an opponent not named the failed to rush for 100 yards against Baltimore. was in line to get a major contract extension at the end of this season. It probably wouldn't be from New England, but the reigning Defensive Player of the Year was going to cash in for the second -- and last -- time in his career. Instead, what looked like a serious non-contact knee injury may sideline Gilmore for the rest of the year. Throw in a lower salary cap in 2021 and Gilmore may have to play next year on what amounts to a one-year deal. finished with a respectable Duane Underwood Jr. Jersey stat line of 38-for-55 for 295 yards, one touchdown and two picks. The i sue for Haskins, as it's always been, was that he struggles when throwing the ball down the field. On pa ses of 10 or more yards in the air, Haskins was 3-of-9 for 56 yards and two interceptions. You can sneak a win in here or there like that, but an NFL team normally can't win football games like that.I'm not sure the will play Week 1 with either or on the team. We've talked plenty about the Niners moving on from Jimmy G ( , anyone?) but Mullens has been bad this year outside of his game against the Rams (thank you, Robert Saleh). Kyle Shanahan said earlier in the week he'll need to watch the film from Yu Darvish Jersey the entire season so he doesn't make an emotional decision once January hits, but it's hard to imagine San Francisco goes into next season with those guys on their depth chart.
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