The Tampa Bay Bucs are preparing for heat in the desert.
The kind of heat the defense of the Arizona Cardinals brings.
“I’m expecting that we’ll see more pressure than we saw last week,” Bucs coach Dirk Koetter said. “Arizona’s always been a pressure team. Sounds like they were maybe wanting to pressure more than they did last week. That’s just speculation, things that you hear out of their media side. I think they’ll try to heat Jameis (Winston) up a little bit. They’ve got good personnel (and) that’s worked for Arizona in the past. How we respond to the pressure — pressure can work two ways. It can be big for them and it can also be big for us.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean Winston will spend time checking down.
“Last week it was a check down game, this week it will be more of a ‘get it out on time’ game,” Koetter said. “It will be less of a check down game, more of a ‘be on time with where you’re going to go with the ball.’”
Koetter thinks the Cardinals, out of their 3-4 defense, will try to force match-ups.
“Absolutely,” Koetter said. “That’s how their defense tries to make it. That 3-4 and they’re not afraid to bring all five of those front. They try to make it five one-on-one blocks up front and man-to-man coverage with a free safety. They have a lot of stuff, but that’s their main thing.”
Koetter said the Bucs will face adversity against the Cardinals.
“We did a good job of that (against Atlanta), but there were times we did a good job of that last year too,” Koetter said. “We’re going to face more adversity than we faced last week, although there were some things that came up. I think that’s something that plays out over time. I think it’s easy to do that in the first game of the year. Depending on how your schedule goes, I think that gets either easier or harder based on how you’re doing during the season.”
