Perhaps the problem here are expectations.
Two days after the Tampa Bay Bucs opened their preseaon schedule with nine points, five turnovers, seven drops, 10 penalties and 31 yards rushing against the Philadelphia Eagles, quarterback Jameis Winston said he thought the Bucs “did okay” in their first effort.
Is this the part where we say “congratulations.”
To give Winston credit, he did say the team has to play better in the games to come.
“We had a good game plan together,” Winston said. “And we just went with it, we just went with the flow. Typically, you try to be vanilla, but we just wanted to see how we would do against another defense instead of playing against our guys. And in my eyes, we did okay. But for future reference, we want to be way better than what we did, we want to be more consistent.”
To be fair, Winston did hit seven of nine passes and led the team on a scoring drive. On the other hand, his fumble set up an Eagles’ touchdown.
“I just dropped the ball,” Winston said. “I was actually getting ready to throw it, and he just batted it down. Great play. That guy (defensive tackle Fletcher Cox) is a hundred-million dollar man. Just got to hit my check-down and be a little bit more decisive and get it to Doug Martin.”
Winston conceded that four offensive turnovers (plus one on special teams) were too many to overcome.
“We’ll never be where we should be because like I said, we’ll never arrive,” Winston said. “Our objective is always to get better, but if you look at the box scores, our offense did a good job. It’s just really hard to win games with four turnovers, especially with my fumble being inside the 10 (yard line). You look at the whole game, the two turnovers that we had on their side of the field, if they don’t get those turnovers inside their own 10-yard line they, don’t score.”
Winston has said that the Bucs have to develop a mentality that they have to hate losing.
“I’m not talking about individual players, I’m talking about a mentality,” Winston said. “I would never call out my teammates and say guys need to start hating to lose. It’s a mentality that you’ve got to have, and it’s an easy choice. It’s a choice; you’ve got to want to win. As a team, we have to make that choice together. I’m not saying just because I want to win doesn’t mean that someone else wants to win, I’m saying all of us have to be together and be on the same page because if we’re on the same page and we have the same common goal, the same focus, we’re going to win a lot of football games.”
The Bucs play in Jacksonville Saturday night.
