By By Ken Filler | Tampa Bay Sports Journal
CINCINNATI — The Tampa Bay Buccaneers did enough offensively to win Sunday’s season opener.
They moved the football. They scored 27 points. They kept Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins out of the end zone.
They received a historic performance from rookie linebacker Josiah Trotter.
But no NFL team can expect to win after turning the football over four times.
The Buccaneers learned that lesson the hard way in a frustrating 33–27 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals at Paycor Stadium.
Three straight Buccaneers possessions ended with fumbles in the first half, and Cincinnati converted them into 21 points.
A fourth fumble in the second half led to another Bengals field goal.
That is 24 points from four Buccaneer turnovers in a game decided by six points.
It doesn’t require an advanced Mathematics degree to figure out why the Buccaneers lost this one.
Baker Mayfield must be better
Baker Mayfield completed 23 of 28 passes for 216 yards and ran for a touchdown. Those numbers look respectable until you get to the statistic that decided the game.
Mayfield lost three fumbles.
The first came when Myles Murphy and Barrett Carter sacked him.
Demetrius Knight Jr. scooped up the loose football and returned it 27 yards to put the Bengals up 7-0.
The second Mayfield fumble may have been even more damaging.
With the Buccaneers on the move in the red zone threatening to score, Mayfield scrambled toward the goal line and attempted to fight for extra yards.
Carter knocked the football loose near the 4-yard line, and Bryan Cook recovered it in the end zone.
Instead of cutting into Cincinnati’s lead, the Buccaneers handed the Bengals the ball and watched them drive 80 yards for a touchdown.
Mayfield’s third fumble came in the fourth quarter when he held the football too long and was stripped by Boye Mafe.
That turnover resulted in an Evan McPherson 32-yard FG that increased the Bengals’ lead to 33–20.
Mayfield has built his Buccaneer career on toughness, confidence, and the belief that he can make something happen when a play breaks down.
Those qualities helped revive his career and earned him a three-year, $165 million extension.
But there is a fine line between playing aggressively and throwing the ball away when there is no play to be made.
Sometimes a quarterback has to protect the football, accept the fact that a play is over, and live to play another down.
Mayfield repeatedly tried to keep plays alive when the smarter decision was to secure the ball.
For a quarterback making $55 million per season, this was not good enough.
“This one falls on me,” Mayfield said afterward.
“They had, I think, 17 points alone off my turnovers. Turns out to be a one-score game, six points.”
Mayfield has always been a stand-up guy and accepts responsibility when he is at fault. Now he must fix it.
The Buccaneers didn’t punt all afternoon. Their possessions generally ended with points or turnovers.
The offense was more than capable of moving the football against the revamped Bengals defense.
The offensive line was a disappointment
The offensive line also deserves its share of the criticism.
We heard throughout the offseason that Tampa Bay had the makings of one of the NFL’s best offensive lines.
That having all starters back together would spark the offense and improve quarterback play. That OL did not look elite against Cincinnati.
Mayfield was sacked four times and hit six times.
The Bengals disrupted the OL with twists, edge pressure, and relentless pursuit when Mayfield escaped the initial rush.
Mayfield held the ball too long on some of those plays, but the protection was not nearly as good as it should have been.
The Buccaneers cannot ask Mayfield to play more efficiently while allowing defenders to collapse the pocket around him.
Both the quarterback and his offensive line need to be better.
Was this really a new defense?
Todd Bowles promised a faster, more aggressive defense.
The Buccaneers added talent at linebacker and spent the offseason talking about creating pressure instead of sitting back and reacting.
Yet much of Sunday felt like Groundhog Day: same defense, different year.
There were missed tackles. There were breakdowns in coverage. The middle of the field was open far too often, and the Buccaneers generated very little pressure on Joe Burrow.
Burrow completed 25 of 35 passes for 254 yards, one touchdown and one interception.
After Cincinnati went three-and-out on its opening possession, the Bengals scored on six of their next seven drives.
The Buccaneers’ turnovers repeatedly put the defense in difficult situations. It would be unfair to blame the defense for all 33 points.
But when the Buccaneers needed a stop at the end of the game, it couldn’t get one.
Mayfield’s 9-yard touchdown run pulled the Buccaneers within 33–27 with 3:19 remaining.
Tampa Bay kicked the ball back to Cincinnati, trusting its defense to stop the Bengals offense and give Baker Mayfield and the offense one final opportunity to get points on the board.
It never happened.
Burrow’s 18-yard completion to Higgins was the nail in the coffin and helped the Bengals run out the clock.
Once again, Tampa Bay’s defense could not make the big play when it mattered most.
“Well, obviously you can’t turn the ball over,” Bowles said. “We had four turnovers. We lost by one touchdown, but it wasn’t just that. We had some penalties and some false starts there.”
Bowles also pointed directly at his defense’s tackling.
“I’d be interested to know how many tackles we missed,” he said. “We missed some chip-shot tackles to get the ball back at the end to give our offense a chance.”
Gesicki finds the holes
The Buccaneers accomplished one of their defensive goals by keeping Chase and Higgins out of the end zone.
They forgot about Mike Gesicki.
The veteran tight end caught five passes for 78 yards and a touchdown.
He continually found space in the middle of Tampa Bay’s defense, an area that has caused many problems for Bowles’ defense in the past.
Gesicki’s 2-yard touchdown reception gave Cincinnati a 14–3 lead following Irving’s fumble.
You cannot become so focused on Cincinnati’s star receivers that you lose track of a tight end working through the middle.
Gesicki didn’t put up Chase-like numbers, but his ability to exploit those openings kept drives alive.
Edge rushers fail to make an impact
The Buccaneers spent the preseason building expectations around Yaya Diaby and rookie Rueben Bain Jr.
If you listened to the praise coming from coaches and the local media, you might have expected the second coming of Derrick Brooks and Hardy Nickerson.
Let’s pump the brakes a bit.
Bain finished with one tackle. Diaby recorded one tackle for loss.
Neither affected Burrow or gave Cincinnati’s offensive line much reason for concern.
These are talented young players, and this was only one game. Nobody should write off either one after Week 1.
But if the Buccaneers defense is going to become what Bowles promised, Diaby and Bain must become weekly difference-makers.
One tackle apiece and little pressure on the opposing quarterback will not get it done.
Josiah Trotter brought the juice
The best Buccaneer performance of the day on both sides of the ball came from a rookie making his NFL debut.
Trotter was everywhere.
He finished with a team-high 10 tackles, two tackles for loss, a sack, a quarterback hit, a pass breakup, and a 38-yard interception return for a touchdown.
His third-quarter pick-six brought the Buccaneers within 27–20 and gave them life after the game appeared to be slipping away.
Trotter became the first NFL player since sacks became an official statistic in 1982 to record a sack and a pick-six in his debut.
Bowles said Trotter recognized a play he had missed in practice and made the correction when it mattered.
“He learned from it and made a play from there,” Bowles said.
That is what the Buccaneers hoped they were getting when they drafted Trotter.
He played fast, attacked the football, and brought some much-needed energy to the defense.
If the Buccaneers are looking for something positive to carry into Week 2, start with Jeremiah Trotter.
Only one game, but we have seen this before
It is important to keep Sunday’s loss in perspective.
The Buccaneers are 0–1. They are not eliminated from anything. 16 games remain on the schedule, and most of the mistakes that cost them in Cincinnati can be corrected.
But Tampa fans have also heard that before.
They have watched Bowles’ defense struggle to pressure quarterbacks, miss tackles, and surrender the middle of the field.
They have also watched Mayfield hold the football too long while trying to rescue a broken play.
They have watched an offensive line receive praise, then fail to meet expectations.
Perhaps sitting so many starters during the preseason contributed to the poor performance.
Protecting players from injuries is understandable, but there is a price to pay entering the regular season without taking meaningful game-speed snaps together.
The Buccaneers looked like a team still trying to find themselves.
One loss will not define Tampa Bay’s season.
But the problems were too familiar to dismiss as mere opening-day rust.
Mayfield has to protect the football. The offensive line has to protect Mayfield. The edge rushers have to get to the quarterback, and Bowles’ defense has to prove it can get off the field when the game is on the line.
The good news is Atlanta, Carolina, and New Orleans were all losers on Sunday. So every team starts the season 0-1 in the NFC South.
