Tampa Bay Buccaneers are nothing more than a giant facepalm vs. Saints

Tampa Bay Buccaneers are nothing more than a giant facepalm vs. Saints

If you could describe the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in just one fitting word in terms of their effort, execution and play-calling against the New Orleans Saints Sunday night, there’s really only one choice: Facepalm.

The Buccaneers entered their nationally-televised matchup with the New Orleans Saints as favorites looking to send a clear message to their divisional rivals about the state of the NFC South moving forward through the rest of the 2020 season.

What happened instead was, well, nothing more than a facepalm. The Bucs fell flat on their face from the very beginning and simply never recovered.

From poor execution on the defensive side of the ball, to bad play-calling from both the offensive and defensive coordinators, to bad interceptions and throws from Tom Brady, to drops from Rob Gronkowski, to poor coverage by the Buccaneers defense, to suspect blocking by the offensive line, to Antonio Brown‘s debut looking like nothing more than a joke, the entire Sunday night game was just laughable.

The result? The Buccaneers were down 31-0 at the half and never even had a chance to catch their breath.

Even when Tampa Bay finally created a turnover and gave the offense a short field, what did the team do? The Bucs drove down to the one-yard line, had four downs to get one yard and got stoned for no points.

The Buccaneers simply aren’t ready for primetime, not yet anyway

Say what you want to about this team, but the truth is that they’re not ready for primetime. The Bucs had a chance to come out and prove to the rest of the league that they were a legitimate force, instead they’re walking away the laughing stock.

It’s not to say that the team can’t learn from the loss, move forward and get better, but it’s clear that the current Buccaneers team isn’t ready for primetime- and that’s been the case all season long.

The Bucs have issues in the trenches. Tom Brady has been suspect at times. The play-calling has been lackluster. Bruce Arians hasn’t done a great job of managing games. You can’t place the blame in just one area, but there’s plenty to go around.

All of that was certainly on display Sunday night in a game that will simply be described as a ‘facepalm’ from here on out.