Bucs bengals game recap

 Disbelief in Tampa 

A tale as old as time , a song as old as rhyme , in Tampa bay last Sunday night it really turned out to be a game of two halves as Tampa bay had one of their best halves of the season in quarters 1 and 2 but in the 3rd quarter , things collapsed , let’s dive right into a game recap with my opinion on why this “collapse” ensued.

The great collapse 17-3 , 34-23 

The game began with Tampa bay forcing an opening drive interception with Carlton Davis who had what some would call a career day , the offence took over and to no one’s surprise they sputtered out and had to settle for 3 deep into the redzone , Tampa got the ball back swiftly after though , from a Joe Tryon sack which forced a punt, this drive Tampa bay went for it deep in the redzone on 4th down and managed to go up 10-0 with a nice Russel Gage touchdown grab. Succop missed a 50 yarder on the next drive which gave Cincinnati good field position but the bucs defence still managed to hold them to 0. Godwin caught a TD on the next drive and that was it for Tampa bay’s perfect half. The bengals snuck 3 on the board and at halftime bucs led 17-3 

The second half saw the bucs try a fake punt but rb Gio Bernard “wasn’t aware” and it resulted in a fumbled snap so the bengals took over in a short field , a very common sight to in this half…., and they managed to put up 3 and made it an 11 point game , Brady then threw an Interception and the bengals took over past the 30…. This lead to a Tee Higgins touchdown but the bengals failed a 2 point try , Brady took over again looking to slow the momentum swing but this time… he fumbled the ball.

This led to a complete swing of momentum and the bengals took it from here and ended up scoring 31 unanswered points in the 2nd half. Late in the game with most bucs fans wanting the game to end , Russell Gage caught his second touchdown of the day making it 34-23 , bengals recovered an onside kick and that was all she wrote.

In hindsight what should’ve happened

Well it’s like they say hindsight’s 20/20 but in reality Todd bowles had no right to call a fake punt in his own territory only up 14 points , WHILST the defence were managing to play such a good first half. The constant turnovers , short fields and just bad offence led to a complete collapse by Tampa bay , in my opinion if the Bucs had of opted to punt instead of faking it the defence probably would’ve been well capable of holding their own on a long field. 

As well as the punt play , Brady really needs to take better care of the football , it was unacceptable how bad his second half play was.

Is there any hope left? 

In all honesty that defensive performance reminded me of the 2020 Super Bowl run but the offence offers almost  nothing worth suggesting that they’re capable of making a deep run , one could argue that the first half was good but in the words of Tom Brady “we literally just gave them the ball, you can’t win games like that” , the bucs have to get better at closing games out and if they don’t , I can’t see them making it any further than wildcard weekend.