The Bucs Next Step Is Turning Pressures Into Sacks
Credit: Eamon Horwedel-Imagn Images
The first two games of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers season featured their defense putting a tremendous amount of pressure on opposing quarterbacks, but that doesn’t exactly tell the entire story. Getting pressure is great, it reduces the time for the QB to throw and makes them prone to mistakes, which worked against both the Washington Commanders and Detroit Lions. But as good as they have been with generating pressure, they haven’t finished the deal.
On the season, the Buccaneers have had 23 pressures, which is third-best in the NFL. Outside linebacker Anthony Nelson has had five pressures, which leads the team, and YaYa Diaby isn’t far behind with four. All that heat on the quarterback has somehow resulted in only two sacks as a team, which is tied with the Washington Commanders and Carolina Panthers. Even if that wasn’t dead last in the NFL (and it is), anytime you are tied with the Panthers in anything after two weeks is pretty embarrassing.
The Bucs’ offense saw first-hand in Week 2 what finishing off sacks can do to an opposing offense. Aidan Hutchinson finished with 4.5 sacks, and after the game, Todd Bowles talked about how everything they tried to do wasn’t enough.
“He’s a hell of a player,” Bowles told reporters. “You see the same things you always see. We tried chipping him, we tried to do a lot of things, but he makes plays. He made our life miserable over there. Hats off to him.”
Now, the Bucs front four might not have a Hutchinson, but they have used a team effort to get into the backfield. According to research from the Washington Post in 2023, each sack takes away 1.5 points of an opponent’s expected points, which is actually higher than an interception. With only two sacks on the season, the Buc’s defense has only cut off three points from their opponent’s expected point totals from sacks. In Week 2, Hutchinson’s 4.5 sacks took down the Bucs’ expected point output by 6.75 points, or nearly a touchdown
The Buccaneers will try to improve those sack numbers starting this weekend with the Denver Broncos. Bo Nix has been sacked four times already this season, and the Buccaneers are going to get their whacks at him. If the first couple of games have been any indication, the Bucs are going to continue to be a problem for opposing offensive lines. They just need to turn those pressures into sacks and start lowering their opponents’ expected point outputs, 1.5 at a time.
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