2012 May See Return To Ground Game “Big Play”
May 31st, 2012Joe knows many Bucs fans still have the fond, vivid memories dancing in their heads of the WD40 days of the Bucs offense: Warrick Dunn and Mike Alstott.
It was a beautiful mesh of two very good backs; the punishing, bruising runs of Alstott and the lightning-quick, shifty moves of Dunn.
Oh, and both could catch out of the backfield.
So by drafting Muscle Hamster Doug Martin in the first round and scatback Michael Smith in the seventh round, added to LeGarrette Blount, the Bucs, per (Scott Smith?) Buccaneers.com, are hoping to replicate not the WD40 years, but 2010.
Why 2010? Because that was the season the Bucs had the most “big plays” from the ground game in franchise history.
Defining “big plays” on the ground as all carries of 10 or more yards, one finds a spike of such occurrences from 1998 to 2000 for the Buccaneers. In those three years, Tampa Bay ranked ninth, eighth and 13th, respectively, in big plays on the ground, creating either 53 or 54 in each campaign. That’s the best stretch of big-play rankings in the running game in team history.
Those are three of the four best years in that category in Buc annals, in fact. However, none of them are at the absolute top of the list. That actually belongs to the 2010 team, which produced 63 big plays on the ground and was the fourth-best team in the entire NFL in that category.
And that’s one reason to hope that some much-needed explosiveness will return to the Buccaneers’ ground attack in 2012 after a tough season in that regard in 2011. The man most responsible for that explosion of explosiveness in 2010 was then-rookie LeGarrette Blount, and he is about to enter his third NFL season, and the first in which he gets to spend an actual offseason learning Tampa Bay’s offense.
The way the Bucs have beefed up the offensive line and the depth at running back, Joe can’t see why the Bucs couldn’t accomplish such a feat.
This information is also why Joe is still floored by how the previous regime underutilized Blount last year to an appalling level. Joe cannot get over the fact that Blount was given just five — FIVE! — touches in the season opener against Detroit.
Then when the season started going south, a certain offensive coordinator, in a shameful, embarrassing attempt to save his own hide, blamed Blount for everything from the Ebola virus to the lousy Florida housing market.





The saga of money-flushing Bucs icon Warren Sapp took another twist yesterday as word broke that bankruptcy-seeking Sapp will keep his job at NFL Network for another year. The gig pays him about $45,000 monthly, per various reports.
The fine folks at BSPN caught up with Doug Martin 


Taking a break from dredging up anonymous sources that paint Greg Schiano as a temperature- and 

Much has been written about how the Bucs will work to capitalize on the typical extreme heat at Raymond James Stadium for early season games.

Former Bucs TE Anthony Becht, who spent five seasons as the Jets’ great tight end hope before coming to Tampa in 2005, routinely has said in radio interviews that it took him three seasons to learn how to be a good blocker at the position.
Soft-spoken Scott Smith of Buccaneers.com was working his video camera again on the practice fields of One Buc Palace and has churned out a feature on Dakoda Watson.




