A look at Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ failures in 2011 season – NFL Season Review (Part V)
Continued from Part IV
At New Orleans Saints
Coming off a bye-week and into week nine the Tampa Bay Buccaneers could be forgiven for feeling relatively optimistic ahead of their away game against the New Orleans Saints.
The Buccaneers had just three weeks earlier defeated the National Football Conference (NFC) South leaders by a 26-20 margin at home.
New Orleans in their last game were embarrassed by the winless St. Louis Rams and were in no mood for another consecutive defeat in this game.
With two NFC South rivals facing each other the atmosphere at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium was electrifying.
The Buccaneers though were thoroughly outplayed right from the start as the Saints scored their first touchdown just two minutes into the game and continued to completely pick apart the Buccaneers defence.
Saints quarterback, Drew Brees went riot and New Orleans were up 17-3 at the end of the first half of the game.
The third quarter was more of the same as the Saints continued their dominance and Buccaneers quarterback, Josh Freeman struggled to make scoring plays.
The Bucs finally got their first touchdown of the game in the final quarter as Freeman connected with Kellen Winslow from five-yards at 5:33.
However, the touchdown came too little too late as the Saints saw off the remaining time and comfortably emerged victorious with a 27-16 margin.
Cornerback, Ronde Barber said after the game.
"We played average at times today. You generally get what you deserve in this game. We don't deserve to be top of the division right now. We aren't playing like it."
This was the first time in the season the Bucs lost games consecutively and would be the start of their dismal performances for the rest of the season.
Against Houston Texans
The Buccaneers returned to the Raymond James Stadium in week 10 to face the Houston Texans and no one expected them to be so thoroughly destroyed by the American Football Conference (AFC) South team.
Bucs quarterback, Josh Freeman passed for just 170-yards and threw three interceptions as his team’s offence was held completely at bay for the majority of the game.
The Texans were ruthless at both offence and defence and Houston quarterback, Matt Schaub surgically cut apart the Bucs defence as he passed for 242-yards and two touchdowns.
The game ended with the Texans routing the Bucs by an embarrassing 37-9 margin.
Coach Raheem Morris was dumbfounded by the result and blamed himself for the poorest Bucs performance of the season.
"Terrible game. Completely, put the blame on me for this one. ... We started the game just like we finished it. Poor job by myself. I'll take complete responsibility for that. I refuse to believe that our guys are that bad, so it has to be my fault."
To be continued....
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