Good team win by the Bucs. The defense outside of one play was absolutely amazing. They finally did what people have been saying you need to do to Brees for the past few years. And they had the talent to execute it. This is easily the best D left. White being back can't be understated. Hopefully their CBs stay healthy and are ready to play. They won't be able to play this style vs Rodgers. A lot of 3rd down penalties kept the Saints offense in this game more than it deserved to be. They will need to clean those up. That tripping penalty by JPP was smart though.
Brate with another nice game again. Also that catch by Tyler Johnson on 3rd down will be lost in all the other big moments in this game, but it was huge. Good for him. Godwin with another drop big drop. You have to think he's due for a break out game next week after how the last two went.
Brees just couldn't get it done. That 2nd int wasn't his fault I think. The WR might have ran they wrong route, which is strange because they've played together a while. After the game was 20-20 going into the 4th I really felt TB was going to win. Their D had just been so on point and Payton already used his trick play. It felt like things had just ground to a halt for the Saints by then.
Brees is a great QB and deserves to be a first ballot HOFer. No news there.
Not Brady's best day but the Saints D needs to get credit. They stuck to their guns and played 2 high safety and were able to keep coverage tight. Not a lot was open. Overall Brady did what he was suppose to do. Play a clean game (though he made one bad throw that the CB couldn't get both feet down on, the other 'almost pick' was never going to happen the way Brady placed the ball. Maybe 1 time in 100, but maybe not even that much). And let the game play out without forcing anything against a well coached solid coverage. No personal foul ejection on the Bucs, which was nice too an a concern going in.
I really think the Bucs should have won by more and blew them out. The only reason they didn't is 2 things. They seemed to get away from what worked for them the last 7 or so weeks. We saw little motion, lots of obvious runs on first down and the play calling was back to what it was before Brady started to get hot mostly. It was like their play calling was based on a robotic decision tree. We didn't see many short passes to Brown and Godwin in space to try to gain yards. We didn't see many misdirection plays. Very little play action. The offense came out very vanilla and it and reverted back to what they did that wasn't working, and it almost cost them. Next week they better get back to LOTS of motion. LOTS of play action. Reverse hand offs and some razzle dazzle. I want to see them pull a few new things out of the bad and try to catch GB napping. After how Evans/Godwin/Brown were held in check tonight, they need to all step it up next week.
I think we will see some great games next week. That Bucs D better be healthy and come to play again. Also, no more hiccups from this offense they will need TD drives to win against GB. Go bucs!
