Monken Opens Up About The Offense

Todd Monken took some time to speak with the media about the Buccaneers’ high octane offense and how they were so successful against the Saints - and the problems the Eagles can create.

The Bucs are entering the week two matchup with the number two offense in terms of yards and number one in points. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise outside of the fact that they did it with their backup quarterback. This team is overflowing with playmakers and talent on the offensive side of the ball and should have one of the best offenses in all of football.

At the end of the day, it’s all about execution.

The Bucs’ offensive minds spend a lot of time game planning and preparing for their opponent, but it goes beyond that. They have to call the right plays and the players have to execute those;

“First of all, I thought lead by Coach Koetter, I thought our offensive staff put together a really good plan. That’s the first part – putting together a plan. We’ve got really good players and I thought they executed the plan about as well as you could. I thought our receivers did a great job with our route running. We had really good protection. Fitz was very accurate – really good with his decision making. Got us into some really good plays. I don’t think we expected that much man coverage, but we did get it. It’s not all the time you – sometimes you get it and you don’t take advantage of it and I thought our guys took advantage of that and that’s a credit to the players. I really feel like it’s a byproduct of how we practiced. You can see that – you guys can’t always see that, but we see that. We saw it in the preseason. We saw a lot of things being done better.”

One of the key things that gets overlooked - and Monken mentions it in the quote above - was the protection. The Saints got zero sacks and ended the game ranked in the bottom three in the NFL in quarterback pressures. Ultimately, Fitz had an eternity to make throws and he capitalized on them.

The unsung heroes of the passing game were Peyton Barber and Jacquizz Rodgers. Their ability to pick up blitzes and keep Fitz’s pocket clean was vital;

“I thought our backs did a nice job. I thought our guys up front did a really nice job of protecting. At times, we got the ball out quickly – we went quickly at times. I thought our plan was really good again headed up by coach in terms of how want to take away some of their game-wreckers – especially 94 (Cameron Jordan), so that was good, which we did at times. Like I said, there were other times when we got a little leakage – Fitz got the ball out.”

This is the perfect example of what Monken is talking about;

Monken needs to be as on point Sunday as he was against the Saints in his play calling and hopefully Koetter is ready. Yes, Koetter’s game planning coming off an opening week win hasn’t exactly been stellar. Koetter is now 3-0 in week one as an NFL head coach, but he’s 0-2 in week two suffering blowout losses to the Cardinals in 2016 (40-7) and Vikings in 2017 (34-17)