Bucaneers Drive Analysis: Defensive Year End Review

This is a look back at the defensive drives for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' season. All my stats were from ESPN.com.  If you have been following along the Drive series, then what my conclusions will not be a surprise. If you have not been following along the Drive series, then hopefully this recap can give you a snapshot of what is in store for the future.

From ESPN's defensive team stat site, the Bucs ranked 25^th in yards per game and 25^th in points allowed. There might be some discrepancies in the actual stats of points allowed when compared to my chart because I do not account safeties, interceptions returned for touchdowns, or fumbles returned for touchdowns, 24.3 points per game compared to 25.6 in the final rankings.

The points per game allowed is worse than the previous two years under head coach Greg Schiano, with the 2013 season was known to be a ClusterBuc of epic proportions on many different levels. To add fuel to the fire, starting safety Mark Barron, a former 7^th pick overall in the 2012 NFL draft, was traded away to St. Louis for a fourth and sixth round pick in late October, after the Minnesota game. Those picks are for the upcoming 2015 draft.

The final averages, rankings, and the trading of a 7^th pick overall would spell out a miserable disaster to where this defense needs a complete overhaul. Yet, that is not the case here. The Tampa-2 takes some time to adjust for the players. The players have to trust other players to play in their particular zone, only problem was the players were not too confident early in the season. The bye week is where the defense began to show its progression.

The bye split stats are very dramatic in contrast. There are significant drops in yards per game allowed along with points per game given up. Look at the drives of 60 yards or longer, notice the drop in the much longer drives. That is part of the reason why the opposing offenses are not scoring as often.

Games after the bye averages represent a 10 game set. Utilizing the games after the bye averages, the Bucs would then rank 7^th best in yards per game average and 9^th best in points allowed average. That reflects yet another dramatic result in difference when compared to the totality of the season of being ranked 25^th for both yards and points allowed average. It also reflects just how abysmal that defense was in such a small sample set of six games.

Since I was dissecting the team via bye week, I went ahead and looked at the turnovers as well as sacks. There has to be some relationship here that may have helped in the improvement of the team after the bye week besides executing better.

From the chart, the defense is creating more chances for turnovers and getting one extra sack per game since the bye week. The team went from mediocre to average, in terms of sacks.

There are so many things that look good since the bye week, that it makes one wonder why there were only two wins? In fact, why was there only one win since the bye week? Part of the reason would be because of an inept offense. The other reason would be the defense's inability to close games. In other words, the defense has blown leads in the fourth quarter.

Of the final 10 games, six of the nine losses were of the one possession loss variety, where 8 points would be considered one possession. Of those six losses, three of those losses were lost because a fourth quarter lead was blown; those games are games 7, 8, and 16. Even though game 9 was a two possession loss, it still goes down as a fourth quarter blown lead. That would bring a total of 7 games where it was either a one possession loss or a fourth quarter blown lead out of the final 10 games of the season.

In total for the whole season, there were six games lost due to blown leads in the fourth quarter, including the last game of the year; though I doubt many Buc fans cry over winning the first overall pick because of the lack of closing out the last game of the year. Those are too many games lost for a team whose head coach is defensive minded.  That needs to be addressed. Even though the last game of the year was evaluating depth, that depth let the defense down as it allowed 16 points in the fourth quarter. Defensive depth matters as it reflects the talent available to the team exists or exposes the lack of talent on the team.

Conclusion

Promise. This defense shows a lot of promise for the next season.  It put up top 10 defensive production in the 10 games after the bye week. Add in talent via free agency and the draft, then the defense will not only improve, but may also have improved talent depth. Although the defense cannot help the offense to produce more points, it does need to help its own self by learning how to close out games to hold onto leads in the fourth quarter.  Closing out games is what will separate this defense from just being a very good or top 10 defense to a dominant defense.  It may take an extra season to get to such a dominance, but for what Lovie Smith and Leslie Frazier have laid down in foundation, that gives a lot of Buc fans dreaming of relevance sooner than later.