 |
| The Buccaneers won 36-17 in Minnesota, handing the Vikings their first home loss of the season. |
So often these days, teams like to look back at a game and
say, “we lost it,” rather than “the other team won it.” If the Vikings try to
pull that one this week, we can call B.S. The Vikings didn’t beat themselves;
the Bucs played a terrific game.
Did the Vikings turn the ball over a couple times? Yes. But
the Buccaneers scored just ten points off those turnovers. They won by 19. I
don’t think you can attribute the Tampa Bay victory to just the turnovers.
Plenty of us knew the Buccaneers had a special young player
in their backfield, but I had no idea that there would be serious competition
for runner-up in the race for NFC offensive rookie of the year – I don’t think
Robert Griffin III will be caught, but I figured Alfred Morris would easily be
the number two pick.
Doug Martin had a spectacular game. He scored twice and had
over 200 total yards from scrimmage. I don’t know how many fantasy leagues he
is owned in, but the team in my league that has him was lucky enough to have
put him in at flex and now has over 30 points heading into the weekend.
Josh Freeman had the fewest passing yards of any game since
Tampa Bay’s bye week, but threw three touchdown passes for the third
consecutive week. Another quick fantasy look-in, the team in my league with
Josh Freeman has him on the bench for Aaron Rodgers. Of course I won’t argue
with that, considering Minnesota was solid defensively at home until last night
and Green Bay is playing Jacksonville, but I know the league member will be
upset if Rodgers doesn’t top 27 points on Sunday.
 |
| Jared Allen became a hero to the Minnesota crowd over this two-play sequence. |
On the other side, Christian Ponder didn’t have a bad game.
In fact, he had a pretty terrific game. A glance at the stat line won’t tell
you that, but Ponder was under heavy pressure all day. Some of his best passes
came while being drilled in the face, in the back, and while rolling out.
Adrian Peterson also had a pretty good day on the ground,
but a costly fumble seemed to have an effect on him for the rest of the game.
He didn’t run quite as hard as he did before the fumble.
Multiple times, the Vikings worked to get back in the game,
but they couldn’t put back-to-back drives together and let the Bucs get away in
Minnesota’s first home loss of the season.
The Vikings are not in trouble yet, and I view this more as
a statement game for Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers have been playing in close
games, and Josh Freeman is playing more like he did two years ago when he
nearly led his team to a playoff birth, when he threw only five interceptions
all year. He has already matched that number this season, but four of them came
in the first four weeks.
Minnesota will get an extra few days to prepare for their
next game, which is good because they have to face the Seahawks and the 12th
Man in Seattle next Sunday. Tampa Bay’s next game will be next week in Oakland.
Find me on Facebook to stay updated on new blog posts as I
publish them and also show some love for my WMUC Sports talk show, The All-Sports Crew. You can also follow
me on Twitter – I recently changed my tag to @cpuffnfl.
No comments:
Post a Comment