The Bucs get their second loss of the preseason, losing to the Jaguars 19 to 13. The Bucs were without Davin Joseph and Josh Freeman, which probably hurt their offense. Still, the Bucs looked fairly good on both offense and defense, where the defensive line really stepped up and got a lot of pass pressure. Sadly the run defense was still porous and did not look good at all, and that was without Maurice Jones-Drew in the game. Similarly, the passing offense looked good, but the running offense looked really bad.
The Bucs kicked off and immediately allowed a 47-yard return by McGhee. Garrard then proceeded to add a 25-yard completion, but their drive stalled because of a good play by Quincy Black and a penalty on the Jaguars. Getting a field goal, the Bucs then got the ball back and marched down the field to get a field goal themselves. The highlight of the drive was a 53-yard pass to Mike Williams, but the drive stalled after that.
Following that, the Bucs defense got to show off their pass defense, and the Jaguars got to show off their ability to get penalized. After trading a couple of ineffective drives and a brief lightning delay, the Bucs' pass rush stood out but the Jaguars started to march down the field abusing our run defense. The Bucs made a nice goal-line stand, though, where Ruud intercepted a pass on the goalline and returned it all the way to the Jags' 19-yard line. Johnson then capped off a quick set of plays with a touchdown pass to Earnest Graham. The Jaguars then marched down the field again, but a redzone stop left them with only a field goal.
The second half kicked off with a nice drive by the Bucs, including a good couple runs by Derrick Ward, leading to a field goal. After that, though, the second and third teamers started to play, and the Bucs couldn't get anything done. With the exception of a few highlights, including an interception and a nice pass defense in the endzone by Cody Grimm nothing very little seemed to work. The Jaguars unsurprisingly exploited this and got a couple field goals and a very nice TD pass by former Buccaneer Luke McCown.
The Good:
- Derrick Ward stepped up and looked good with his carries, juking out people and doing a lot better than Cadillac was doing.
- Josh Johnson
- Mike Wiliams continued to be stellar.
- A lot of pass pressure from our 4-man rushes.
- Sean Jones looked good at safety
- Some impact plays from the linebacking group, with a goal-line interception returned for 80 yards by Ruud as a highlight.
The Bad:
- Reggie Brown. He got a couple of looks but didn't manage to come down with a ball.
- The running game, Cadillac Williams specifically. We could not get anything going on the ground in the first half.
- Run defense is still bad.
- Sabby Piscitelli, who got a penalty on his only impact play of the evening - on special teams. He did get a good hit later on in the game, though.
- A bunch of whiffed tackles
- Despite pass pressure, still gave up a lot of yardage in the passing game. Mostly underneath throws, though.
- Special teams did not live up to their usual high standard, including Brent Bowden who did not look as good as he did before.
The Ugly:
- Michael Clayton. I don't think he got on the field once. I'd be very surprised if he were on the field come week 1.
- Third string everything looked absolutely terrible.
- Clifton Smith fumbling on his first kickoff return.