JACKSONVILLE, FL – The Tampa Bay Buccaneers hit the road this week for a joint session with their in-state contemporaries on the First Coast, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and we were there to bring you some of the highlights of the action on an extremely hot and humid start to the week. While they’ll be in shells on Tuesday, and share an off day on Wednesday in advance of their actual game the following day, the two teams were padded up and ready to hit each other for two-and-a-half hours.
The Jags intensity level was better overall than the Bucs, and while some in attendance attributed that to the Jags “playing full-throttle” while the Bucs were simply in practice-mode, we beg to differ. The Jaguars are in the midst of a complete cultural-overhaul and that is under the direction of Tom Coughlin and Doug Marrone. If you don’t play “full-throttle” in practice, you will NEVER see the field. Teams should prepare accordingly in these settings, not the Jaguars. If you don’t think it (the lack of intensity) annoyed Head Coach Dirk Koetter, or think it spilled over to his offense’ execution, think again. “It just wasn’t very good. Draw your own conclusions.”
Offense versus Defense in the first half of the practice was very good for the home squad, with Bucs WR’s and DB’s standing out. Most notably was former FSU wideout, Bobo Wilson and one of the main attractions on the offense this fall, DeSean Jackson. Wilson was breaking ankles with cut-on-a-dime crispness, while Jackson was flying past his matchup on the outside connecting with Winston on a beautiful pass in-stride directly in front of the Jaguars’ fans.
When it was big-on-big (OL vs. DL), both the Jags OL and DL got the better of the Bucs for certain in the team drills, but it was Tampa’s D-Line getting the much better reps towards the end on the individual side. Dante Fowler Jr. stood out for his work against Demar Dotson, winning his 1-on-1 battle after Dotson got the best of hi in the rep beforehand. Gerald McCoy also flashed at times, while DE Robert Ayers was held in-check for the most part by the Jaguars’ Rookie LT from Alabama, Cam Robinson.
The Bucs did got sloppy at the end of the practice, with Adam Humphries dropping a pass that led to a pick-six while during special teams drills earlier in the morning, specifically punt blocking, the Jaguars rush was getting to Bryan Anger with relative ease, and it was coming from the edges on one play, then straight through the middle on the next. Mike Evans also dropped a pass that he normally reigns in with ease. Naturally, #3 was just fine with his head coach’ brutally honest assessment of the practice, as well as going back to his staff’s assessment of their game up in Cincinnati on Friday evening.
“Room for improvement everywhere. That’s why I love our coach, man. He’s a perfectionist, and that’s the standard that we have to play every day,” said Winston. But that’s not what left us with our eyebrows raised. Winston looked to be extremely sharp except for the two passes to Evans on the first drive of the game. He orchestrated two drives that appeared to have “midseason form” stamped on them. His final grade, however? “Well, the coaches gave me a B-minus.”
Speaking of that first preseason contest of the season, we made mention of the fact that the coaching staff were very high on rookie Kendell Beckwith’s potential to land a starting spot sooner rather than later. Well, an unfortunate injury to starting Sam (strong side) Linebacker Devante Bond leaves a golden opportunity for the rookie from LSU to perhaps start alongside his former college teammate, Kwon Alexander.
Beckwith was credited with five tackles on the evening and while he went through a few moments where the learning curve seemed a little too steep, the young man continues to pass his first-year exams with flying colors with his coaches. Asked about who stood out on film, Koetter was quick to point to his rookie. “On defense, [Kendell] Beckwith had production. You could tell it was his first game. He had some mental mistakes, but he had the production.”