Bucs Beat Dolphins 31-28

Tonight was probably the best all-around performance by the Bucs in Preseason. For the most part, I like what I saw. There were some miscues, and some issues that popped up, but I think, after 3 games, some questions appear to have been answered.

On offense, the Bucs were able to rack 24 offensive points with Garcia zipping in a nice deep pass to Galloway in the endzone on yet another broken play. McCown led the team to a field goal. And Bruce led the team to 2 touchdowns. The most impressive thing for me is that, after playing three straight playoff caliber defenses, the offensive line, including its first tier backups, has shown that it's for real. I'm really impressed with the offensive line overall. The Bucs started with Donald Penn at RT to give him a lot of work over there, and he was very solid, though he did fail to get a Miami DE knocked down on a pass to Williams, which got picked off and led to a short TD drive for the Dolphins. Caddy managed to rip off a couple of good long runs. All of the receivers played well, including Warren and Gessner, who both made statements for making the team. Boston also had a good reverse despite his recent incident. The QB's did alright, with Gradkowski playing the best. Luke seems to have regressed some, and held the ball too long a couple of times with the result being coverage sacks. The other backs all managed to get good runs in, with Graham making the most of it. Tight ends were a little quite and Heinrich looked pretty piss poor when he dropped a Simms pass right on the numbers which would have sustained a drive. For me though, and I can't emphasize it enough, the offensive line looks very solid all around and it should give us a glimpse of what we can expect this season.

On Defense, the first team struck quickly by first stopping Brown for a 2 yard loss, then Cato stripped a screen pass right out of Brown's hands for a short TD interception return. The next series, however, the defense made a lot of good plays, but kept giving up some key plays to allow Miami to keep the drive alive and score a TD. It's hard to tell if the defense is going to make a habit of that during the regular season, as they're running a lot of base, and the veterans on this defense tend to play a little less tighter than they would in the regular season. It's disturbing to some degree, but we've seen this defense shut teams down at times this Preseason, so we'll see. I can't really blame them too much on the second score, as that was just a big time trick play that allowed the back to get open. Not too mention the back's knee actually hit at the 3 before th ball crossed the plane, but nobody reviewed it. They shut Miami down on the next drive. The backups played MUCH better this week. Nece finally looked good at MLB. Still don't know if I like him there long term, but Ruud is going to be the man unless he gets injured. The third string defense did a pretty decent job, but had some bad plays at times that allowed Miami to hit a couple of long TD passes. The defense played a lot of prevent and looked the part (man do I hate the prevent!!). Overall, it was a so-so night, but I didn't see anything really alarming as the run defense was pretty solid all night long and the pass rush looked decent for most of the night. If there's one area of concern it's the pass rush. They are getting in the QB's face, but they need to get to the QB one step quicker to start knocking these guys around.

On Special Teams, the Bucs looked pretty solid with good returns and solid coverage. The punting and field goal kicking units were excellent, including a well run fake FG pooch punt. Jones and Owens both tried to make statements in the return area. Overall, this unit was solid.

With three games in the books, I think it's safe to say that the Bucs have a pretty solid team. If they can avoid key injuries, especially to the lines, this team could have a chance to return to the playoffs. Right now 9-7 or better looks to be a pretty strong guess. It will be interesting to see how good this offense is late in the season if Garcia stays healthy all year. It could be another late charging offense that starts putting up large scores late in the season like the '02 squad did. Just one more game to get through, and we'll see who they carry into the season.