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Ground-and-Pound Bucs Look to Outlast NFC Wild-Card Race

Tampa Bay is staying in games with a good defense and a successful running game that has no business being successful.
Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports

The wild-card picture isn't quite how we had imagined it a month into the season, but we learned pretty quickly that the NFC East was better than every other division in the NFC. The Vikings and the Eagles fell, and the Giants and Washington rose. The one thing that was a little bit unexpected is the team ahead of Washington for the No. 6 seed, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

I wound up writing the Football Outsiders Almanac chapter for the Bucs this year and based it mostly on Jameis Winston. If he broke out, I thought the Bucs could be surprise playoff contenders in the same way that the Andrew Luck Colts were early in his career. If he didn't, I reasoned the Bucs probably weren't heading anywhere.

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The Bucs haven't really seen a breakout season from Winston, though he has taken a modest step forward, mostly in the last six weeks or so, by cutting down on turnovers. Instead, Tampa has found rejuvenation under first-year head coach Dirk Koetterwith the same strategy they would have had under his predecessor Lovie Smith: run the ball and play good defense.

Only two teams have run the ball as many times as Tampa has: Dallas and Tennessee. But Dallas and Tennessee also both run the ball while actually being effective at it.

The other teams that run this often tend to either a) have a rushing attack worth using or b) are desperately trying to hide the fact that Brock Osweiler exists. Tampa has created a good passing offense out of Mike Evans, tight end Cameron Brate, and duct tape. But they still shy away from putting too much on Winston's plate, because they know that he can get a bit erratic at times, so they lean on the running game.

Doug Martin has been excellent since coming back to the Bucs, breaking tackles at a rate of 23.2 percent, the sixth-highest of any back with more than 100 touches. The problem is, well, the offensive line is a disaster. Of the youth Tampa injected into the unit, only guard Ali Marpet shows much as a run blocker. Demar Dotson is solid but oft-injured at tackle. Tampa's offensive line has allowed the third-most carries for loss or no gain in the league, and are second-worst in power situations. The stats back up the tape: this team gets no push up front at all.

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Meanwhile, Tampa's defense has always had star power in defensive tackle Gerald McCoy and linebacker Lavonte David. What they needed was some semblance of pass rush and better-than-replacement-level play around the stars. Enter Noah Spence.

Spence slipped into the second round of the draft because he had to transfer from Ohio State to Eastern Kentucky after failing several drug tests. He was a slow study, but has come on recently. He's up to 5.5 sacks despite starting just two games.

The Tampa pass defense has become capable of winning decisively against bad offensive lines (Seattle) and offenses without a real playmaker (New Orleans). Combine that with all the running, and the Bucs are capable of creating a game where the opposing offense has to be efficient with its drives to succeed.

Their big tests ahead are Dallas—a better version of the game plan they run—and a run-it-back game against the Saints in New Orleans. These are both winnable matchups; this team has the ability to stay in any game because of how they work to bleed clock.

It's not a totally foreign concept in today's NFL, but it is interesting that a team with a rushing offense this badhas been able to be successful with it.