Team Under Control

Looking back at the 2015 season every game was filled with penalties and flags all over the field. A majority of them were from being an undisciplined team. Some of that could have contributed to being one of the youngest teams in the NFL but most of it is purely unacceptable. The Bucs have not been a smart team over the past two years as they have been one of the most penalized teams during that two year span. 143 penalties in a season should just not happen and it leads to losing football which is why Lovie Smith is gone. This is one of the big reasons why Lovie got fired, in that he kept saying the team is going to cut down on the penalties, but they just continued every week. Here is a quote from Lovie after the loss against the Giants in which the Bucs were called for neutral zone infractions three times:per tbo.com

“It’s just like everything else,’’ Smith said. “We have techniques we’re not doing correctly. So, you keep working on them in practice and in games and you keep taking different measures, different steps, which we’ll do.

“Some things are hard. But (being penalized) before the snap and after the whistle is blown, that shouldn’t cause us to lose any football games. So we’ll keep working on it just like we do everything else.’’

So basically Lovie said being offsides doesn't cause the team to lose games which might be true, but it still has an impact on the game and affects momentum. The main point is that Lovie was too lenient when it came to penalties and the players were obviously not listening to the coaching so the same crap would just continue to happen every week. To be honest, I think Lovie lost this team after the Redskins loss in which they had 16 flags and blew a 24 to 7 lead, which just cant happen.

I know for a fact new head coach Dirk Koetter wont put up with stupid flags, and neither will defensive coordinator Mike Smith. This team must play with more control and discipline if it wants to be a consistent winning team. This team needs to stop the excuses and go play football. This has been an issue for this team, lets hope coach Koetter has the solution because it needs to stop now. Lets not see this again in 2016,(click on his name) Mike Evans