It Helps To Have Explosive Plays
June 10th, 2026
Need a return to explosion.
Want to win? You’ve got to score points.
The best way to score? Have explosive plays.
Former handicapper turned stathead Warren Sharp shared interesting stats last night. Simply put, good teams have explosive plays on offense, generally, and bad teams don’t.
An explosive play is not an official NFL stat. So definitions vary. Former Bucs coach Dirk Koetter measured an explosive play as a run play that gained at least 12 yards or a pass play that gained at least 16 yards. Sharp measures an explosive play as any offensive play that gains at least 15 yards.
So what does this have to do with the Bucs? Well, this may come as a shock, but Joe found (thanks to Sharp) that the Bucs ranked 23rd last year in explosive plays. Seven of the top-10 teams with explosive playsm ade the playoffs.
Joe is sure a combination of injuries to everyone on offense not named “Graham Barton,” truly pathetic guard play from Bucs backups and Bucky Irving having a nightmare season all contributed to the lack of explosive plays.
Bucky’s backslide was bad. As a rookie in 2024, Bucky had the 10th-highest explosive rate of all running backs. Last year? He was 45th.
June 10th, 2026 at 3:57 am
Bucky was 45th in explosive plays, and White was 36th.
Bucky came back from injury and was struggling. White played well while Bucky was out. But, coming down the home stretch, with the division title and the playoffs slipping away, suddenly it was time to force feed the ball to Bucky and have White cooling his heels.
It had to be about personalities because it sure wasn’t football.
June 10th, 2026 at 6:59 am
Injuries clearly affected offensive performance and well as poor playing calling from GRIZZARD. Injuries also affected the defense too. Bowles and Jason Licht bare responsibility for lack of backups ability to perform.
The 2025 Bucs was a very good team at the start of the season and a very bad team in the second half of the season.
A healthy team at the start of this season will determine if the Bucs are a playoff team in the playoffs.
June 10th, 2026 at 7:33 am
From first to almost worst. It was hard to watch, whether it was playing and personnel usage. There were some bright spots, no count yet on how many explosive plays we generated offensively in 2025, but we did flash at times mostly because of individuals efforts rather than the offense just functioning at it’s peak.
Tucker in Buffalo stands out the most in terms of running the ball with 106 yards on 19 carries. Dig a little deeper into that, the number show 95 of those 106 yards came before contact. After that game, it took the next 3 games to get Tucker to match the amount of carries he had in Buffalo.
Robinson can win me over if he can re-diversify our run game.
June 10th, 2026 at 8:23 am
We needed our explosive plays to cross the goal line. We would get inside the 10 and then move sideways or backwards.
June 10th, 2026 at 8:28 am
We really had a problem with our OC Grizzard. He just was not ready for the promotion, and his philosophy coupled with the injuries led to the season we had.
Before the season he proclaimed that he would run Coen’s playbook with more shots downfield. With the line subs not able to hold blocks Baker had to run to create plays and save his life. And incur more injuries.
The background of Grizz was as a passing coordinator and that showed.He could not design a running play, and kept sending Bucky between the tackles. The result was a busted Bucky and not being able to score on 1st and goal in New Orleans..
Despite all of this we tied for first place and lost the division on a tiebreaker. I wouuld not get too worried about this year as long as we do not have too many injuries. Zac is an experienced OC and knows how to design Coen-like plays. Especially running plays.
The drama queens will while about “3-28” and clutch their pearls, but this team is headed for a good season if they stay reasonably healthy.
June 10th, 2026 at 8:37 am
Chuck-it-Deep Joe thinks explosive plays only come from deep throws. Explosive plays are only 15 yards, so big runs behind good OL blocking counts as well as screens counting. On a per touch basis, Sean Tucker may be the most explosive runner.
June 10th, 2026 at 8:45 am
“Explosive plays are only 15 yards, so big runs behind good OL blocking counts as well as screens counting.”
This was the secret sauce of the 2024 season, good balanced run game alternating White & Irving with quick hitting pass plays for alot of YAC
June 10th, 2026 at 9:51 am
It’s Bucky’s third year under The Great Regressor. He will most definitely continue his backslide. 2025 will look like a Jim Brown season for overrated Bucky compared to his performance in 2026.
June 10th, 2026 at 3:21 pm
atlanta struggled to score points and we have their OC now
June 10th, 2026 at 4:27 pm
It would help if Baker was accurate throwing the ball beyond 12 yards down the field.
As for Bucky, it would help if the OC looked at the 2024 tape, and realized there’s more to running the ball than just calling 1st and 10 up the gut for 2 yards.