You can talk about the scoreboard all you want.
To Tampa Bay Bucs’ coach Dirk Koetter, the story was in the turnovers.
The Arizona Cardinals intercepted four passes by Jameis Winston and forced a fumble, leading their way to Sunday’s 40-7 victory over the Bucs. After that, everything else was details.
“Everything’s going to start and end with the turnovers,” Koetter said. “You just can’t turn it over five times and be 5:0 in the turnover (ratio). I think there’s something like three games in the history in the NFL where teams lost a turnover margin that bad and been able to win. (You’re) not giving yourself a chance when you turn it over like that. So really everything that happened last night stems off of those turnovers.”
Some of the turnovers, Koetter said, were because of Winston’s throws. Some were just because of good defense.
“It was a combination of both,” Koetter said. “We’re in no-huddle, we pick up two first downs and then we take a shot. And Jameis took a shot, but we were trying to throw a deep post to Mike Evans. Mike had inside position on (Arizona cornerback) Patrick Peterson, and you’ve got an elite corner and a top-flight wide receiver going against each other. If you really look at that play, Peterson looked like he was the receiver. He used his body to bump Mike off. If that were an offensive guy doing it, they would’ve called offensive pass interference, but they’re not going ever to call that on the defense.
“That was really a pretty good throw by Jameis and Peterson made a great play. The interception at the end obviously was a desperation throw where Jameis has to give him more of a chance. We tried the quick screen to (running back Charles) Sims, Jameis needs to throw that ball a little higher; it got tipped by the defensive end, and then Sims tipped it up again in the air, pick six. I’ve mentioned this to other people I’ve done things with today, that we, until the last three series of the game, our pass protection — even though the Cardinals were bringing a lot of pressure — our pass protection was solid. We did a good job. What we did not do a good job of is making them pay with our throws down the field. We had some that Jameis was high on, we had a couple that Jameis missed on, we had a couple where the routes weren’t what they needed to be, and you just can’t do that. When they’re pressuring you, you’ve got to make them pay, and we didn’t do that.”
Koetter said he expects to see resiliency from his team this week when they are home against the Rams.
“I expect and want to see fantastic resiliency,” Koetter said. “When you just look around the league, that’s sort of how the NFL is. The Cardinals had a disappointing loss (last week), they came back and got after us pretty good yesterday. Look at the Rams, who we play this week. The Rams lost 28-0 in their opener to the 49ers, come back (and get a) huge win against Seattle yesterday. The Falcons, who we beat last week, go on the road to the Raiders — who were a hot team — and played well enough to win, get a big win on the road. We haven’t been tested yet this season in that department, but the fact that we’re coming into our own home stadium for our home opener, that’s definitely going to be what we’re working for.”
Koetter said the turnovers had put pressure on Tampa Bay’s defense.
“My biggest concern about the defense is that the offense is putting them in too many bad positions. That’s the main thing. It’s one thing if it’s just the defense against their offense on a long field versus turnovers that are putting the defense at a disadvantage. Sudden change situations, we’re in too many of those right now. And then our defense gave up six explosive plays — six plays by the Cardinals accounted for 209 yards. (They) made some big plays. One of them was a result of missed tackles, the little check-down to the back, made a nice run up our sideline, we missed a couple tackles right there. And then of course in our two-minute defense, we let them throw it over our head.”
The Bucs haven’t been 2-1 since 2011 when Raheem Morris led his team to a 3-1 start and finished 4-12.
