How Did Joe Haeg Perform in Ali Marpet's Place vs. the Saints? | Bucs Insider

you guys every day. Veterans Day is just a very specific special time, but the Buccaneers love honoring military families and everything you guys do. So first of all, thank you to all of you guys for the veterans. UM. Now, when we're gonna start out, I know that this game we're talking about before the show, like, oh boy, this is gonna be fun to discuss. So we need all of your questions. We want to hear what you guys want to know, what you want to talk to us about.

So if you're not already watching on Facebook, make sure you head over there. You can leave your questions for us in the comment section. As we get people a

chance to do that. UM, we can start by just some of the takeaways of now that we've heard him a lot of the teams since the game in press conferences, what it feels like they have learned from that game, their mindset moving forward, some of the things that you've heard people say, Well, actually, the only people we've heard from so far Bruce, I mean, other than post game

this week are Bruce and Lavante. And of course, because it wasn't a victory Monday, the players were in building and to approximate in a non COVID year, what would be open locker room on Monday, Uh, they got us a player for a zoom call, and of course it was Lavonte David. He's the stand up guy who has to stand in front of the the are sitting in front of the camera in this case and uh and and answer for that game. And he did a great job of it. And essentially the idea is, you can't

say it didn't happen. Uh, you can't say it didn't matter. You have to own it. You have to break it down and learn from it and find out what you did wrong. Uh, do your best to correct whatever that was, and then you have to move on. And that's what

they've done from now. And you know, big losses like this, they ing Um, you can't even necessarily say this one only counts as one of sixteen like all the rest, because it was a division game that that really carried a big tiebreaker issue with it that the Bucks are now behind the eight ball on. But it doesn't have to linger, and it generally doesn't. I just was looking

through UM games where the Bucks lost. Every team has games where they've won or lost by a huge amount of points, and it doesn't have any future indicator even to the next week of what's going to happen. UM. And you know, we've seen the other side of it. We demolished Green Bay surprisingly thirty eight to ten and they won their next game. So, uh, it doesn't. It

doesn't have to carry on. But I think in order to make sure that doesn't happen, you have to learn the right lessons from it, and that's certainly what they're trying to do. Absolutely, we did get a chance to see the first look at a Chris Godwin back and be Antonio Brown into the lineup and basically having all of your wide receivers at least available for the game. We know that maybe Chris is still a little bit limited potentially by the thing here and that kind of thing.

But you know, there are still some some little nagging injury situations, but everybody was available. This is our first look at that whole group. What do you feel like we learned from seeing that, Well, Chris caught the ball. Well, uh, that's that's a good thing. And uh, he's a tough guy obviously, and he's I learned. We learned a couple of things. One, it's so obvious how important Chris is

to this offense. Uh, there were, if you count places that were raised by penalty, there were fifty plays and he was on the field for forty seven of them, which is more than any of the other receivers. So they didn't take it easy on him in his return. And then also of all of the snaps, there are forty six plays accountant and the Buccaneers were in three or four receiver sets on forty of them. And this is what we were talking about the last couple of weeks,

even before the arrival of Antonio Brown. Uh, that it just looked like the Buccaneers were going to try to attack with a lot of three and four receiver sets, just because there's so much talent at that position. Obviously, nothing worked in this game, and I don't think we can use it as a good barometer for whether or not that's the right way to go. I think we have to see a little bit more of it. I

think we can definitely excel with three and four receiver sets. Um. It didn't really work out in this game, but I still think we're gonna see a lot of that. So uh, Antonio Brown played about thirty seven snaps, which or maybe thirty nine, which coach said afterwards that wasn't really the plan, but that game spiraled out of control and you were trying your best to pass your way back into it. So that's kind of how that happened. Okay, And we had a question from Anthony about the ways that are

different cornerbacks are being used. Um. He mentioned the idea of Sean Murphy Bunty and seeming to be in the slot position more Jamal on the outside and just where you see is we I mean, we know Carlton is our our number one, you know guy, but where you've seen some of the other corners being used, well, Sean is working in the slot more. He was already taking all of the uh snaps in the slot in the

nickel package. It's just he was starting along with Carlton as the two outside guy is and then moving into the slot with Jamal Dean coming in to play the outside in those snaps, and those are the majority of your snaps, usually from six of your snaps in a

game are in the nickel um. The difference now is that Jamal Dean is starting, so Sean the last couple of games has only been playing the nickel and again I say only, but it's a ton of snaps, so more more often than not they're all on the field. But the difference is Jamale Dean playing a hundred percent

of the snaps now on the outside. And I think that's just you know, it's funny because we were getting a lot of questions in the first couple like six weeks, Uh, do you think that maybe Jamal Dean will get a chance to start on side and now? And we always said, sure, it could happen. I mean, if you make enough plays, it's kind of undeniable that you need to be on the field. And I think that's just what has happened

with Jamal. So that's really the biggest change. Otherwise there's not a big difference, Okay, and Russ asked, is there any chance we will get Ali back on the line this Sunday? And then I wanted to just kind of add to that how you felt like Joe Haig did stepping in for him. Well, this is we've talked about this before. The timing of this show makes some of

these questions hard to answer. And with concussion, Uh, it really these first couple of days are probably gonna tell us on the injury report what the chances of that are, because it was pretty obvious from the beginning of the week last week that he wasn't going to come off

the concussion protocol in time. Uh. Coach Arians didn't and I think just probably for strategic reasons on Monday, didn't elaborate very much on that, only to say that he was still in the concussion protocol, which you have to be because part of that is returning to practice. That's one of the steps and getting off of concussion protocol. And since he hadn't practiced at all last week, he

by necessity has to start this week in a concussion protocol. Now, what we don't know from Bruce's answer, since there wasn't much to it, is is that the reason why he's still in the concussion protocol and he's gonna start practicing this week, or he's not that close to returning, and there's no telling with the concussion really, they can vary quite a bit. In severity, Chris Godwin only had to miss one game earlier this year and was pretty much

ready to go in the second week. So all you can do is hope that that's the same thing with Ali. But if we were answering this question on Thursday and Friday, we probably have some more concrete information. Uh. It's just so just stay tuned to what you see on buccaneers dot Com and on our Twitter feeds. UM asked for Joe Hag, Joe Hagan and Donovan Smith on the left

side there. Bruce arians didn't shy away from the fact that it wasn't the best possible performance from Donovan, and part of that was because him and Joe hadn't had a lot of time to work together, and Donovan and Ali Marpett just worked together so well, So I think that was part of the breakdowns there. So actually, Bruce said, Joe Haig played fine, uh, and I think the bigger deal was more them to working in concert. And if they have to do it again this week, you would

hope that they've made some progress in that regard. Okay, and Brandon asked, why do you feel like Brady isn't targeting Mike Evans as much? I don't know, man, I'm not I'm not in his head. Um, it's clear from what the coaches say that they do want to get the ball to Mike, and more often they've done some things like put him in the slot in three and four receiver sets. UM coach Arean said on one play that I think it was a failed third down that

Um the ball went to. I think Gronkowski rob Gronkowski and and Mike was open. UM. I certainly don't think there's any specific purpose to it. It just hasn't happened. But it picked up a little bit. It didn't. You know, he wasn't getting targeted much in the first half of that game, but he got targeted a lot more in the second half. So I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it. I don't think it's a trend.

I think it's just something that has happened. Um. I keep expecting to see a couple more big breakout games from Mike. You know, he does have a couple of hundred yard games this season. There have been games where Tom Brady has targeted him a lot. Um. The overall answer is the ball has really been spread around a ton this This team has ten different guys with ten catches, which is kind of incredible. Uh So, I think it's a bit of that, there's a lot of weapons, and

then it's a bit just flukey great. Um. We also had a question about if we're seeing the effects of Vita being out potentially if that's affected, you know, the push they've been able to get stopping the run, Like, have you seen overall what the results has been of him being out and how the guys have been able to try to step in for him a little bit. I mean, right after Vita went out, the run defense

stayed pretty strong. Uh the one two weeks ago, I mean, they broke our streak of not allowing a hundred yards, but it was a hundred one yards and a lot of that had to do with Daniel Jones running the ball. They don't get over a hundred without the quarterback scrambling for about thirty yards, So that one wasn't that big

of deal. So we're basically talking about one game. It was this one against Alvin Kamara and then also a whole lot of um uh Taysom Hill, which is not something you normally have to face, and they did get a hundred thirty yards. They also didn't need to do anything but run the ball in the second half of

by thirty one points. Uh and and from what we heard afterwards, some of that had to do with missed gaps, which really isn't you know, gap control issues, which really isn't uh tied directly to whether or not Vitave is in there. If the guy was supposed to be in the gap and he wasn't, that would have been the same whether or not Vita was in there. So it's it seems obvious that your run defense wouldn't be as good when you lose one of the best d line

run nose tackle run stoppers in the league. But I don't think it's really a massive issue. I think we're still very good against the run. And then we'll close with this Christian McCaffrey. You're not sure if he'll be available on Sunday. Um just how important is that to the way this game could go? And what that could

mean in terms of how the Bucks prepare for this team. Yeah, well, I don't think they have to prepare differently because what the Panthers have found out is that Mike Davis, well, it doesn't really look much like Christian McCaffrey, more of a shorter, more compact guy. Uh is able to run the same place. He's a very very good pass catcher. He's actually second in the NFL among two kamara among running backs and receptions. So they don't have to change

their offense. They can do all the things they do with Christian McCaffrey. With Mike Davis. Uh, nobody's Christian McCaffrey. Mike Davis has been very very good it, but he's not Christian. And when you when McCaffrey came back this last week, he merely got a hundred fifty yards and two touchdowns hunts from scrimmage. That is so obviously the

Panthers are better with McCaffrey in there. But the other side of that coin is in the last eighteen game or nineteen games that McCaffrey has played since the start of two thousand and nineteen, he's reached he's exceeded a hundred yards from scrimmage in fifteen of those, So the other four games that he hasn't one was a ninety eight yard game against New Orleans last year, and the

other three year all against the Buccaneers. So the only defense that has really been able to slow down Christian McCaffrey in the entire NFL the last two years is the Buccaneers. So at least you should go into a confident that even if cmc plays, you do have some someone of an answer for all Right, well that's gonna do it for us on Buccaneers Insider Live presented by Miller Lyte. Thanks as always for those questions. We will be back here next week. We'll see then, m