How much change?

Joe has three core beliefs when it comes to winning football:

1. Play good, smart, solid fundamental football and everything will fall into place. Confession: Joe stole this from Bill Walsh.

2. The quarterback must go down. And he must go down hard. Joe also stole this. It came from Al Davis.

3. Don’t fix something not broken. Joe didn’t get this from anyone. It’s a genuine belief.

Last year there was nothing wrong with the Bucs offense, even though it was a dink-and-dunk offense.

Joe wrote that last year and he got called out by then-Bucs offensive coordinator Liam Coen. But it was true. The Bucs rarely threw further than 20 yards downfield.

But guess what? It worked. The Bucs had one of the best offenses in the game in 2024.

Now there is all sorts of data out there that demonstrates Bucs receiver Mike Evans is still, at 31, one of the best go-route receivers in the game. A go-route is almost always used on deep passes.

Despite this, Coen kept the offense in mostly a dink-and-dunk format. Again, it worked and worked very well.

So the following was interesting to Joe: Famed handicapper-turned-stathead Warren Sharp listed how many passes each team had of 25 or more air yards.

The Bucs had just 10, which reinforces the NextGen Stats data that the Bucs didn’t often throw long passes. You know, dink-and-dunk.

Only three playoff teams had fewer than 10 passes of 25 or more air yards. That was Los Angeles, Detroit and Kansas City (Detroit really surprised Joe).

While Joe isn’t big on tinkering with something that isn’t broken, would it be beneficial for the Bucs to have more long passes than just 10 in 17 games?

New Bucs offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard has hinted several times that might just be the case. But Joe has to wonder if that may negatively affect the offense? Again, the Bucs were a ding-and-dunk team that excelled with short passes.

So Joe is torn. Should the Bucs get away, ever so slightly, from an offense that worked for them? Being so loaded at receiver, maybe they should throw long more often?

Even if that deviates from one of Joe’s core football beliefs.

completions of 25+ air yards:

22 – GB
21
20 – PIT, MIN
29
18 – IND
17 – LAC, CIN
16
15
14
13 – TEN, PHI
12 – BUF, SEA, DEN, LV, CAR
11 – BAL, WAS, NO, SF, JAX, HOU, DAL, NE, NYJ
10 – TB, CHI
9 – ATL,NYG
8 – LAR,DET
7 – CLE
6 – KC
5 – ARI, MIA

*2024 regular season

— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) June 24, 2025