A Day Late and A Buc Short

Stally's Goal Line Stand

Freeman's stock has taken a big hit. (Getty)

It's a day after the Tampa Bay Bucs lost to the Dallas Cowboys 31-15 to fall to 4-10.  The final score doesn't do the rout justice, as the Cowboys were on a 28-0 romp at halfime and more or less put it in auto-pilot the rest of the way.

The rough Saturday night home loss comes one week after they lost to the then-3-9 Jaguars by an embarrassing score of 41-14.  Not only has Tampa Bay not won many games, but they haven't been in many of them either.

They lost 38-19 two weeks ago to a similarly bad Carolina team, and they've also lost 37-9 to Houston and 48-3 to San Francisco.  Forty-eight to three in the NFL!?  That's almost as bad as Indy's 62-7 loss to New Orleans!

While Austen and many other analysts saw some sort of sparkle with this team, I always identified it as a pyrite (fool's gold).  Sure, they won 10 games last year, but nine of those came against teams with losing records.  (The 10th was a Week 17 win over a New Orleans team that was locked in the NFC's fifth seed.)  They beat the Browns and Bengals by three and the Rams and Redskins by one.  They were far closer to being a 7-9 team than a legitimate playoff team.

The biggest area where people, like ESPN's Bill Simmons, tended to overrate the team was at QB.  In the Era of the Quarterback, most passers get a 300-yard game like a complimentary feature of an oil change, but not the Bucs' Josh Freeman.  He didn't throw for 300-yards once in 2010.  Everyone looked at his phenomenal ratio of 25 TDs to six INTs and anointed him as a star.

Nobody bothered to consider that his 25 TDs barely scraped into a tie for 10th-best in the league.  He was below guys like Matt Cassel and Carson Palmer, tied with Joe Flacco and just two in front of the likes of David Garrard and Ryan Fitzpatrick.  Yes, by all statistical means, Freeman struck me as a very average, at best, signal caller, that benefitted from a strong defense (ninth-best in points against in 2010) that didn't require him to carry the team to wins.

He's returned to Earth this season.  He has just 13 TDs to 18 INTs, that's just ugly.  He's probably regressed to the mean and then gone past it, at this point.  I do think he's good enough to go 1:1 in terms of TDs to INTs, but I didn't buy his 25 to 6 in 2010, and I've been proven right.

But, let's not solely blame Freeman.  The Bucs D is now 31st-best in points against, better than only Indianapolis.  Running back LeGarrette Blount has been dinged up and is more of a power runner, and less elusive, than some people seemed to think he'd be (sorry to pick on you...Austen).  People like myself that liked WR Mike Williams have been disappointed and only once has a receiver (TE Kellen Winslow vs. Green Bay) gone over 100 yards receiving for Tampa Bay.

All in all, Freeman's on that Mark Sanchez level.  He's not terrible, but he isn't good enough to carry a team and needs playmakers and a strong defense to help him out.  He doesn't have any of that, and, as a result, the Bucs definitely looks a day late and a few bucks short to being a competent team this season.

Barring large scale changes, I won't give a much better prognosis for next year.  Keep in mind that I was the one that said they'd go 6-10 before the year started and even that's looking optimistic right now.  With Carolina on the improvement trail, I think they'll finish in last in the NFC South this season and that they might want to get comfortable in that position.