Bucs’ Hall of Famer Derrick Brooks questions team effort

Derrick Brooks usually saw success.

He saw tackles, and he saw interceptions, and he saw victories.

These days, he’s seeing a lack of effort out of the Tampa Bay Bucs. On WDAE, Brooks chastised the Bucs in their performance against Atlanta, where he did not like what he sees.

“The small subtleties of this football team not executing some simple things as effort,” Brooks said. “Yes, there were some effort plays that I felt our defense gave up to that Atlanta offense, and it was just pure effort that did not win. It wasn’t scheme. It wasn’t right play/bad defense. It was just effort, or want to. And that was a little bit concerning.”

Bucs’ coach Dirk Koetter didn’t completely agree.

“I think everybody has their opinion,” Koetter said. “I think when the score got to where it was, our effort was not where it needed to be. When you don’t force them to punt, let’s be very frank – that’s not a very good defensive performance. I’ve moved on from it. I’d really like to talk about our upcoming game, but since you asked the question, I’ll answer it. And there (are) no excuses. It doesn’t matter what happened in the previous week, we’ve got to go out and play. We’ve got to play much better and as I’ve said many times: let’s not pin it on the players, let’s pin it on the coaches and on me.”

 Koetter did admit his team’s defense has to be better.

“When you try to put pressure on the quarterback and you don’t get there, then you’ve taken resources away from your pass defenders. And when you take resources away from your pass defenders, depending on who you’re playing, you don’t like those one-on-one match-ups,” Koetter said. “We’ve got to work in concert as a defensive unit and it’s not one unit that’s failing. We can’t sit here and say that it’s the defensive backs, that it’s the linebackers, it’s the defensive line – we’ve all contributed to it. The coaching staff hasn’t coached to the level that we need to coach, we haven’t played to the level that we need to play in the first eight games.

“We’ve got to do a much better job of communicating, in terms of pre-snap and post-snap. There’s a lot of things that go on, there’s a lot of moving parts and when you don’t communicate well and you’re misfitting a gap or you have the improper leverage on a pass play, you’re going to give up some big plays. And we’ve got to do a better job making sure we put in a game plan that our players can go out and execute. And that’s the thing that we’ve spent time in the mini-bye that we just experienced over the three days, again, looking at what our guys do best and what gives us the best opportunity to stop them. Because again guys, you’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, we’ve lived it, it’s not acceptable.”

The Bucs have a possibility of getting running back Doug Martin back into the lineup against the Bears Sunday.

“I hope I’m ready by that time,” Martin said. “We’re still seeing if I’m able to go at full speed and that’s why I’m taking so many precautions and I’m seeing where we go from there, but I’m hoping I can.”