This season, Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense found their stride in Germany.
The Buccaneers offense finally looked like the one we expected entering the season during Sunday’s 21-16 win over the Seattle Seahawks. The ground game got going behind rookie Rachaad White (105 yards) and Brady threw darts to Chris Godwin and Mike Evans.
In the absence of an uncharacteristic Brady interception and a bizarrely called Leonard Fournette pass, the Bucs would have won. Having the offense move the ball Sunday after struggling against the Los Angeles Rams last week is a positive sign for the Bucs.
On SiriusXM’s “Let’s Go!” podcast, Brady said, “I think we’re in a better position than we were five quarters ago.” We also beat the Rams, which was an awesome win for our team. So, look, I think it’s going to be a challenging year for the NFL. First, we had to win in Germany to get to 5-5 before the bye.
Having watched a lot of yesterday’s games and highlights, I realized that there are a lot of teams that are playing well. Minnesota to go into Buffalo, that’s a difficult one. It has been a good season for the Eagles. It has been a good season for the Chiefs. Other than that, it’s been kind of a hodgepodge of wins and losses, good games, bad games and which defenses show up, which quarterbacks show up.
It’s 5-5 for the Bucs, one game ahead of the 4-6 Atlanta Falcons in a woeful NFC South. After the bye week, Tampa will face the three-win Browns and three-win Saints before hitting the 49ers. Despite their early-season struggles, the Bucs could coast to the playoffs with one of the easiest remaining schedules in the NFL.
“It’s been a unique year to watch,” Brady said. The most important thing when looking forward is how do you play your best football? And if you play your best football, you need to believe that you can win every week. There’s just one problem: how?
“And I always come back to preparation, to your process. Are you doing the right things to be able to prepare ourselves to play and ultimately get to game day and then be at an emotional level where you can play very well and you can play very free and you can play with a lot of excitement like we did yesterday? So yesterday? of a template for winning for our team yesterday than it has been all year. Played very good defense. Offense was a little bit better. Now we’ve got to see if we can continue to improve from here.”
Brady-led teams have struggled early and then got it together down the stretch for playoff success. It is clear that the Bucs possess the talent to make noise when things go right. The last five quarters might have saved the season. The next seven games will define the season.
After the win, TB12 was able to laugh off Fournette’s pass to Brady, which he slipped like an uncoordinated high school freshman.
The thing about it was when the ball was in the air, I knew I wasn’t going to catch it, but I tried to tackle and try to keep the ball, and then I fell on my face,” he said. “So in a lot of ways, you know, embarrassment and shame at the same time on the same play. I won’t forget that play. And I haven’t had many receptions in my career, so I thought it would be pretty cool to get one in Germany. But it only seemed right that the country with no speed limit on the Autobahn got to see me run routes as a wide receiver, which was very, very slow.”