Welcome two Bucks Insider, presented by ticketmaster Casey Phillips here with senior writer and editor Scott Smith. And we got a game to recap, a game to look forward to, and unfortunately the one to recap was not how we hoped it would go. But the Cream School part.
Of it was pretty great.
I feel like we got to separate the two things of We can talk about what happened on the field, but I want to first talk about the fact that this was our long awaited Cream School game. Stadium looked amazing, jerseys looked amazing, fans looked amazing. It was incredible. I loved it. I mean, look at some of these posts we have, I mean just everything looked beautiful and shout out, of course to our amazing photographers. And it was a beautiful,
beautiful day, perfect weather, and the stadium. Just at the graphics, the whole digital team, the cheerleaders, I mean it was That's what I loved is we didn't just do the jerseys. We also did the whole thing, the stadium. This is funny. People haven't seen this clip that this is Tristan Ware was talking to Seool about Sewell was saying, hey, let me get that jersey and for people to know. A lot of times players will trade jerseys with each other at the end of the game. You know, they have
a bunch of different people. And Tristan's like, no, man, like, I'm keeping this. There's no way.
I guess a story about it. Did you hear Levonte when he was talking before the game. No, so he's the only one who had played in oh A Creamsicle before on the team because he twenty twelve is the last game and he's the only one that was on the team then.
And he they asked him if.
He kept his jerseys, Like, I was young then I didn't realize you were allowed to keep your jerseys, and so he didn't. And then a couple of years later he asked for it. He said they'd already given him away. So I said, this time, I'm definitely.
Yeah, I'm so glad you got a chance to be here for that. That would have been so sad. But yeah, so that all just looked incredible. We love seeing everybody out on their creamsicle stuff. So now let's get to the less fun part of the what happened on the field. Yeah, we know that, man, the Lions are a great team, but we also know that there was a lot that the Bucks knew they could have done differently or better
in that game. It just it did feel like there were so many missed opportunities that and I'm sure you can say this about a lot of games, but in this way, it just felt like it just this had gone a little differently, or you know, I think especially about the Baker play, and you know the fact.
That Mike was, well, we're seeing these missed ones to Trey here. There were two of them, and I know Baker felt disappointed, frustrated by these. After the game, he said so several times. The the one that really turned things was the tip pass where Mike Evans was seven yards behind the defense and the last defender was looking in the wrong direction. So yeah, yeah, so and it ends up being an interception and three points the other way.
It might have been seven points the other way. You can do this obviously after every loss, and it's cliche, but the long and the short of it is that the Buccaneers had their worst offensive performance of the season, felt frustrated and mad about it afterwards, but also felt like they know what was there and what could have been and what can be fixed and what this offense
is capable of doing. So it always you always feel like a certain way after one game, after the New oronce Saints game where he scored more than twenty points of them for the first time that anyone had in more than a year, you felt, Wow, this thing's really clicking. We're doing all kinds of different things. There's a lot of riding in this offense. And then after this one you're like, Wow, what's wrong with the offense? Are we doing too much?
Did we simplify?
And Baker said this week yesterday said no, it's not a matter of simplifying.
It's just execution. The play calling's fine.
Had we hit a few of those plays, nobody would be talking about the play calling right now.
Right. Yeah, that's a very good point. And we saw again a couple of those were to Trey Palmer. What do we see about the role because I mean, we've always know Mike Evans, Chris Scotlin, those are your guys. But we've seen Trey Palmer's gotten some touchdowns, you know, preseason and regular season, He's made some big plays. So what are we thinking that his role could be in this offense?
I think you're seeing him become more and more the number the primary third receiver, and you can see that in the snap counts and the targets. From the last game, he had thirty seven offensive snaps and there weren't a ton because the time of possession was so lopsided, so thirty seven was a lot. I think Devin Tompkins had fourteen. Trey Palmer had seven targets to two for Devin Tompkins.
And this is nothing about Devin Tompkins. I'm just saying it appears to be like Trey Palmer is becoming your obvious third receiver and getting a lot of looks, and it didn't go great as we saw some of the missed ones. He was targeted seven times and only caught two of them, but those two were two of the Bucks three plays and went for over twenty yards. So he's a guy that the volume hasn't been huge yet in terms of how many catches he gets per game, but a lot of his plays have been big plays.
And as he gets more and more time on the field and more and more looks, we should see more.
Of that great and someone else, of course, we saw more of Klijah Caanci a guy that man. I was so excited to see what he was going to look like because he'd already shown us once this year that he could be injured for a while and come back
looking great. That he did that in his eleven snaps against Minnesota after missing a lot of training camp, So then they have to pull him out again, he missed more time, and I was like, is he going to be able to do this again where he comes back and gets a sack in his first career game that he plays the whole time, and I just feel like he looks like he was ready to hit the ground running, you know, especially considering he's a rookie. In his MISSI much time.
I mean, you say that, but he said he was rusty, Coach Bowles him. That's my point. Coach Bowles says the same thing. He's got some rust to shake off, he's got some detailed.
Techniques to iron out.
But in the time that he's played, and this includes those eleven snaps, nine of which were pass rush snaps in that Minnesota game, in the time that he's played, of all the defensive tackles or interior defensive lignement in the league, this is there the top guys in terms of pressure rate. That's how many times they've caught a pressure of the quarterback on among their pass rush snaps.
That's a really high percentage.
I mean, Jalen Carter, everybody's raving about him this year and Collijea's it's a smaller sample, don't. Don't get me wrong, Jalen Carter has about four times as many snaps as Klija does.
But the pressure rate is very promising right right off the bat.
Especially coming off injury. Being a rookie, I think that that's very fair, even if it is for less snaps.
No, it's an impressive start and it makes us, you know, kind of optimistic about what's going to happen there with him next to Vitavea. At some point, defenses are gonna have to choose, you know, pick your poison. Who you're gonna double team. Yeah, probably most times, can't double team them.
Both, yep. And so talking about him bringing pressure, how about Baker Mayfield under pressure and what have we seen from him in this area and just in general, I mean, I already feel like our offensive line has done a really great job in terms of past protection with him. But we've seen that in the times that he is under pressure, he's really made some impressive place.
Yeah, and to be more specific to tackles, Trisan Warris and Luke Getticky have really done a great job in pass protection. When there's been breakdowns, they've mostly been up the middle, and that's usually the hardest thing for a quarterback to deal with, is that quick pressure right in his face. Baker Mayfield's numbers under pressure this year are kind of insane and they probably can't last because league wide, if you get pressure on the quarterback, it's usually a
negative play. Okay, this is look at this thing EPA. Do you know an EPA is expected point out. It's kind of like war and baseball. It's a difficult stat to explain, but basically, positive numbers for a quarter back are good if you produce a play that makes it more likely your team will score points. This is total EPA on plays when the quarterback is under pressure. Every quarterback in the league has started at least two games
Baker's nine plus nine point four. To put that in context, Josh Allen is second at three point four, and they're the only two guys over in positive territory. Tua Tongel is having a great season, but even he under pressure is a little bit worse than normal. Right, that's numbers, I say, I honestly don't think that can last.
That's that's out of bounds.
But so far Baker's been incredible.
Were five games, that's pretty incredible. That's amazing, all right. And then now I know it's easy after a loss to sometimes have a bit of the everything is everything is terrible, Oh my gosh, this guy is probably in chicken little situation. But it is really great to still put into perspective where the Bucks are in the division standings at this point. I know that again they know
they're capable of more than what they've done. But when you look at these division standings here, thankfully everybody else in the division also didn't have a great day on Sunday. That was very handy of everybody. We appreciate it. And so look at where your Bucks sit.
Yeah, you came out of the New Orleans game feeling awesome, three and one in first place, had your bye week, came back and unfortunately had that luss, and then you look around and go, hey, we still through that whole time, we remained in first place. So there's a big battle coming up this coming Sunday. As you can see the New Orleans Place tonight, So we'll know, and the Falcons will know whether we're trying to stay ahead of them
or whether they've dropped back a little bit. They play the Jaguars, so that game on Sunday could be for sole possession of first place.
It will be if the Bucks went obviously.
Yeah, that's going to be really interesting. So looking at this Falcons team, you know, it's always interesting to me how a division team is the one you're supposed to be familiar with, You're supposed to kind of know what they do because of how often you play them. It's been different to shared knowing. I mean even just the fact that every team in the division has a new quarterback. But then you look at the Falcons. Not only do they have a new quarterback, but they have Bjon Robinson,
I'm running back. They've got all these new guys on defense, new defensive coordinator. I mean, they just have all this new stuff. So tell us a little bit about what stands out to you about this Falcons team that will be facing.
Well, they and coach Bowls and a couple of guys were talking about this yesterday. They've added some guys like you were mentioning on offense, like Bijon Robinson obviously obviously, Jonas Smith the tight end, Hollins the receiver, Scottie Miller, the former buccaneer. So they can do a lot more stuff than last year when they were basically the most run heavy team in the league among teams that didn't
have a running quarterback. And this year they still they could do a lot more, but they still run the ball and present heavy sets a lot more often than every other team in the league. And to explain this, you know, but if maybe every listener out there doesn't know what eleven and twelve and twenty one means, that formula is the first number is the number of running backs, and the second number is the number of tight ends. And then that's out of five because you have five
eligibles on every place. So the number you don't display in the middle would be the receiver, So eleven would be one three to one. Okay, So one eleven personnel means three receivers, which has become the dominant pack in the NFL. Almost every team runs the majority of their plays out of eleven personnel. The Falcons are by far the lowest, and that the next team on the list is thirty seven percent. So they don't show a lot
of three wides. What they do show a lot of is twelve would be two tight ends, twenty one would be two running backs, and twenty two would be really heavy two tight ends and two running backs and just one receiver. If you look at that, that's what about eighty seventy something percent of their plays or out of these heavier packages, and they tend to run most of their run plays to the outside of the tackles. So I was talking to Levante about this shameless plug on
Salty Dogs. Please take a listen for shameless plug. We felt it was quite a get. That islet is a get. In fact, it was with no warning either. We just found them in the lunch room and we're like, would you.
Say Lavante is just like the Good Guy Award every year.
It was a great interview.
If you don't care about the rest of Salty Dogs, listen to it just to hear Levante talking.
But he was talking.
I asked him, who's the key who are the key defenders? When you're talking about a team that runs almost all of their running plays outside the tackles, and he said, us meet the linebackers because they have to diagnose quickly and take the right angles and get to the edge.
And as I told him in this interview, I'm like, when I picture a Levante David highlight in my head, I picture him in the Falcon Stadium making those plays where they're diagonaled to the outsides of the plays and getting to the guy knifing through the defense and dropping that guy two yards deep. So hopefully we'll have a vintage Levante performance because it's going to be important against this rushing attemp.
And man, what a game he had against the Lions. As we talked about some of the things that were the struggles in that game, Levante stacked that stat sheet.
He sure it did.
He was everywhere and it was we had again, if
we want to do another shameless plug. We had Antoin wine Field Junior on our show this week and we were asking him about Levante and he was like, he's so consistent, and he said, and for him to be the kind of consistent he is at this point in his career, because we talked about the fact that typically with players you either have like the youth on your side for your physical abilities, your speed, your hip up, mobility, all that stuff, or you've got the savviness of a
vent and knowing the game. And he was like, Lavante is one of the few people that just somehow seems to have both at the same time.
I'm not going to spoil it because I wanted people to go listen to it. But he talks about all that.
I love that. It was amazing fun shouted it out and Leavonta gets to explain it.
I want to hear a player talk about that prop to do that and how he's still playing so well in his twelfth season.
Yeah, please go listen to that interview. It's really good.
That's amazing. I love that, all right, and then we'll close with this. Our rookies went to Moffitt. I just always love highlighting this stuff, all the different community efforts that everybody does. And they visited with a lot of
the patients over there, which is just so great. And you know, after recent years, there was a lot of times with COVID that they couldn't actually visit patients very well, and it is so nice to see them back over there at moffit getting a chance to say hi to all these people, and our rookies are such a great group and just had so much fun with everybody, and
they're playing games with all the kids. And I just love that it's always good to keep in perspective after a loss that there is still so much that this team is doing in the community and how much joy they're bringing a lot of these people, and so I just think that's a lovely thing to keep in mind. And look how fun I know, right, I was like, I think we need to throw him out there with a We should have thrown him out there with the Swashbucklers last game. Put on some moves. Now we know
why he's a good pass rusher. You know he's got moves, all right. That's going to do it for us. On this edition of Bucks Insider presented by Ticketmaster, thank you so much for being with us. We'll see you next time.