It was always going to be long odds, and sadly the Buccaneers couldn’t surmount them as they dropped their fourth straight loss Sunday.
The 17-14 affair against the Green Bay Packers basically killed the season for a Tampa Bay team that needed a savior — an ask unfairly delegated to an undrafted rookie quarterback making his first career start in Jalon Daniels. But so the dice roll, and the Bucs’ front office and coaching staff have come up snake eyes.
At 0-4 and facing an extremely difficult next
draw with the Dallas Cowboys on the road on a short week this Thursday, it’s hard to see the Bucs’ first win coming any time soon.
All we can do is try to muster some positives as the season fades further and further in obscurity.
Offensive Top Performer: QB Jalon Daniels
The statline won’t be remarkable to anyone with the context of it belonging to a UDFA, but truly Jalon Daniels deserves praise for the difficult circumstances into which the coaching staff inserted him.
Daniels threw two bad picks, but nothing uncharacteristic of a young player making his first start against a deceptive defensive scheme. He also kept the team in a close game with resiliency and grit. He completed 19-of-27 passes for 148 yards and score, along with 8 rushes for 56 yards — a single-game record for a Bucs rookie QB.
His offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, who’s now proven that he is in fact quite bad at his job, largely failed to give him easy answers to the test nor good chances to create chunk plays. The longest play through the air was 21 yards.
Daniels is a good kid who showed why he deserved a spot on an NFL roster, but it just wasn’t enough on Sunday. It happens.
Who else do you really praise here? Bucky Irving is great when the team decides to actually use him. He carried the ball 16 times for 61 yards but got no looks in the passing attack and was often neglected for long stretches. Sean Tucker got his first action of the year and got a touchdown, that was cool I guess.
The hyper fixation on Cade Otton (6 targets) is extremely strange, he caught 4 passes for 37 yards but also dropped yet another easy one. Said focus is hampering the team’s ability to actually use its young receivers (Emeka Egbuka and Ted Hurst combined for 4 catches and 38 yards).
There were continued issues with untimely penalties, not getting playcalls to the QB efficiently, and having some piss-poor protection plans. It’s pretty clear at this point there is no quick or easy fix coming.
Defensive Top Performer: CB Jacob Parrish
Parrish completely balled out on Sunday and continued to show how big of a hit he was as a 2025 third-rounder.
Parrish recorded 5 tackles (1 for loss), a pass defensed, and a critical red zone interception that kept his team in the game — a turnover he went off-assignment to secure, by the way. He also could’ve logged a forced fumble if an official review went his way in the first half, but so it goes.
Rookie LB Josiah Trotter experienced a few more growing pains but largely showed up in a positive way with 9 total tackles. His football instincts and physicality are clearly there, which are the essential building blocks.
David Walker flashed again with one of the team’s only QB pressures and a run stop. More of the same from everyone else though.
Special Teams Top Performer: No One
There’s no point of stretching to praise Chase McLaughlin’s two extra points.
A strong argument could’ve been made he was the better choice to attempt a 65-yard-field goal (which he did last year) on 4th down rather than letting Daniels try to get 11 yards, but so it goes.
Now that the Bucs have actually needed to punt the last couple weeks, we can renew the conversation that Riley Dixon is one of the league’s worst punters. He averaged a paltry 40 yards per kick on 4 punts. A conversation needs to be had about replacing him (again).
