When you’re wondering why these are the worst of times for the Bucs’ pass rush, perhaps you should look first to the best of them.
Gerald McCoy, the Pro Bowl defensive tackle of the Tampa Bay Bucs, has been limited by shoulder problems this season. Perhaps that is one reason that McCoy did not have one of his best days as the Bucs blew a large lead against the Redskins.
“I think it’s a problem that all of us have,” coach Lovie Smith said. “We haven’t done our job well enough. Gerald is a part of that. As far as double-teams, guys get double-teamed [all the time]. There are guys in our defense, the three-technique, that’s going to get double-teamed a lot on runs. It’s just a part of the game.
“Gerald McCoy has made plays. It’s not like he’s playing bad ball. We, all of us, didn’t play as well as we needed to this past game. Let’s not indict or brand a label on somebody based on what we didn’t do as a football team. We didn’t get it done that last time. We will. Gerald didn’t play that last time we went up there and played them. We’re feeling good about getting one of our main guys ready to go this week. Defensive line should love playing on turf. I know we talked about injuries and how it affects it, but defensive linemen should love playing on turf when you can get a good start, that should help a lot.”
A shoulder injury has slowed McCoy. He’ll try to endure it against the Atlanta Falcons Sunday.
“Gamewise we haven’t had to adjust,” defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier said. “We’ve done some things practicewise where we’ve taken some reps off of him to get him ready for Sunday, but when we line him up on Sundays we expect him to be the Gerald that we know – to go out and compete and make it hard for teams to single-block him. That’s been the case for the most part.
“We haven’t tailored our defensive scheme knowing he is a little bit banged up. I know Gerald is not a guy that would ever make an excuse for any reason. He’s not doing that now. He’s giving us everything he has. [He’s] not 100 percent. but you can go around the league to most teams, there are a lot of guys that aren’t 100 percent that are playing. That’s just the way it happens in our league. We have other guys that aren’t 100 percent that we’re counting on to go this Sunday.”
Frazier was asked how McCoy graded out against the Redskins.
“He didn’t grade out as well this last ball game, but he has had a good season up to this point and he has done some good things,” Frazier said. “You’ve got to remember the standard for Gerald McCoy, it’s a little different than most, so we expect certain things from him that we don’t expect from ‘Joe Schmo.’ It’s a little bit different. It’s a higher standard for Gerald McCoy.”
“McCoy pointed out the challenge for Sunday of playing against Matt Ryan.
“We have to get pressure on Matty Ice (Matt Ryan),” McCoy said. “I think he’s one of the top five quarterbacks in the league. He’s definitely an elite quarterback so we just have to get pressure in his face, make him uncomfortable early. If he gets comfortable, it’s going to be a long day.”
