Bucs' struggles on third-and-long a long story, not a new one

By Greg Auman
Published

We will write a lot this offseason about why the Bucs offense was so much worse in 2022, barely scoring half as many touchdowns as it did the year before. We will write about losses on the offensive line and the worst run game in the NFL and Tom Brady getting rid of the ball so quickly and the absence of downfield passing and all that.

But today, we'll just look at one small but telling and somewhat incredible stat: The Bucs went 3-for-68 on third downs needing 10 or more yards in the 2022 season, including Monday's playoff game.

That's three such conversions all year, a 4.8% conversion rate in the regular season, the worst in the NFL, and according to a graphic on the ESPN broadcast, the worst for any team in any season since 1980. It seems nearly impossible, with Brady at quarterback and talented receivers like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin there to make plays under such difficult circumstances.

First of all, let's revisit those three conversions, just for the novelty. Two of them came in the Bucs' Week 10 win over Seattle in Munich, Germany, which is to say that Tampa Bay went 1-for-62 on third-and-10 or longer in the United States this season. One came on the Bucs' first touchdown in Munich, a 31-yard throw to Julio Jones on third-and-10, and another came in the fourth quarter on a Brady third-and-10 throw to backup running back Ke'Shawn Vaughn, an 11-yard catch essentially negated by a Brady interception two plays later. The only other conversion came early in Week 2, when Brady hit receiver Scotty Miller for a 23-yard gain on the opening drive, which ended later on a fumble on a botched snap.

How bad is 4.8% on third-and-long? Consider that the Chiefs, best in the NFL in this, converted 38% in the same scenarios. For more perspective, the Steelers converted four third-and-10 plays just in the second half of their Week 6 win over the Bucs, on passes from quarterback Mitchell Trubisky.

And this really isn't a new problem for the Bucs — while averaging 30 points a game last year, they still struggled in third-and-long, going 6-for-49 all season for a 12.2% conversion rate, 30th in the league. Even at their peak in the Super Bowl season in 2020, the Bucs ranked 19th, converting 21% on third-and-long, in a year when they were top-five in most passing statistics.

Your first instinct is, "Oh, Brady sorely missed Rob Gronkowski," but the duo really didn't do much in third-and-long. In two seasons in Tampa, Gronkowski had four targets on third-and-10-plus and the Bucs didn't convert on any of them. Godwin had four such conversions in 2020, but over the past two seasons, the Bucs have thrown to Godwin 17 times in third-and-10-plus, and he has no conversions in those 17 attempts. Evans, who will be thoroughly covered by any smart defense in third-and-long, has only 13 such targets in three seasons with Brady, and he's gotten two first downs, both in 2021.

In many ways, the Bucs have tried to create an offensive scheme that caters to Brady's strengths, especially at his age, but third-and-long is an area in which they haven't done a good job of that. If you look at Brady's time with the Patriots from 2001 to 2019, New England ranked sixth-best in the NFL in third-and-10-plus conversions, getting 22.8% over two decades. That's close to what he had his first year in Tampa, and much, much better than where the Bucs wound up this season.

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To isolate third-and-10-plus plays is an interesting way to evaluate quarterbacks under some of the most difficult of circumstances. On third-and-long, defenses not only can fully anticipate you're throwing the ball, but they know exactly where you're trying to get, which makes it a low-percentage passing down. 

Brady, for the record, has 884 such throws in his 23-year career, basically a full season and a half of nothing but third-and-long passing. And if you look at the top 20 active quarterbacks in career third-and-long passes, he is one of only three to have more touchdown passes than interceptions on those plays: Aaron Rodgers has 22 TDs against 17 INTs, Brady has 29 TDs against 23 INTs, and Matthew Stafford has 34 TDs against 32 INTs.

Not all quarterbacks are so poised under pressure. Ryan Tannehill, for instance, has three career touchdowns against 18 interceptions in third-and-long, and Baker Mayfield has two TDs against 13 picks. If you're wondering which active quarterbacks have the highest passer rating on third-and-10-plus, they are Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Derek Carr, Carson Wentz and Joe Burrow. The most impressive TD/INT ratios go to Mahomes (8/4), Herbert (9/5) and Josh Allen (11/6).

Back to the Bucs — what leads to such struggles in third-and-long? Your instinct is to say they're a terrible rushing team, so they find themselves needing more yards on third down in general, but that's actually not the case. The Bucs needed an average of 6.2 yards on third downs this season, which is the second-lowest of any team, bested only by the Packers, and still they finished 21st in overall third-down conversions. 

So the issue is more execution on third down, rather than any circumstances that set up third down. One exception is the sheer volume of third-down plays: The Bucs had 270 this season, second-most behind only the Chargers, which speaks to their overall struggle to move the chains on first and second down without chunk plays downfield.

We've looked at third-and-10-plus here, but you can step back and look at third-and-7 or longer — a benchmark more readily associated with what offenses want to avoid when they're seeking "third and manageable" — and the Bucs are still easily the worst offense in the league, converting just 12.7% there. That's a marked drop-off from last season, when they converted 25.8%, in line with the 2020 conversion rate of 26.4%, which ranked 15th and 20th out of 32 teams, respectively.

If you look at passing statistics in third-and-7-plus, this essentially takes away the screen game and requires more downfield passing in higher-leverage situations. And here, Brady clearly struggled — his season numbers are 46-for-83 for 420 yards, with one touchdown and two interceptions. There were 25 NFL quarterbacks who had 50 or more passes on third-and-7-plus. In completion percentage, Brady's 55.4% ranked 22nd of 25; in passer rating, his 63.3 rating ranked 23rd of 25; and in yards per attempts, his 5.1 yards ranked last, 25th out of 25, in a situation that relies heavily on the quarterback finding open receivers when the defense knows a pass is coming.

In this area, you see a clear three-year regression from Brady. A year ago, under the same third-and-7-plus conditions, he completed 61.6% of his passes for an 82.4 passer rating and 6.7 yards per attempt, all ranking between 15th and 18th out of 27 quarterbacks with 50-plus passes. In 2020, he had 60.9% for a 95.0 passer rating and 8.1 yards per attempt.

Some of this can be attributed to Brady playing as a more careful, risk-averse passer this season, at times seeming like he was more focused on avoiding interceptions than throwing touchdowns. If you split his season in half, you see two different levels of aggressiveness: In the first nine games, he had 10 touchdowns against one interception, giving up plays in exchange for fewer mistakes; in the last nine games, he had 17 touchdowns against nine interceptions, much more scoring but more turnovers as well. Tampa Bay went 4-5 in both halves of the season, so neither model worked remarkably better than the other.

A higher volume of touchdowns and interceptions takes us back to 2019, when Byron Leftwich's offense featured Jameis Winston at quarterback. The Bucs ranked ninth in conversions on third-and-7-plus that year, hitting 29%, better than any of the Brady seasons, and while Winston had five touchdowns on such plays that year, he also had an NFL-high seven interceptions, one more than Brady has totaled in three seasons of third-and-7-plus since then.

Tampa Bay's passing woes involved much more than just the quarterback this season — in terms of dropped passes, the Bucs had 29 this year per Stats.com, and only the Packers (30) had more in 2022. Whoever the Bucs have at quarterback in 2023, and whoever they have running their offense for that matter, they'll need to be markedly better at third-and-long. Of the league's 10 worst teams in converting in such situations this season, the Bucs were the only one to make the playoffs, and with a losing record at that. 

Greg Auman is FOX Sports’ NFC South reporter, covering the Buccaneers, Falcons, Panthers and Saints. He is in his 10th season covering the Bucs and the NFL full-time, having spent time at the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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