A look at Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ failures in 2011 season – NFL Season Review (Part VII)
Continued from Part VI
Against Carolina Panthers
After five straight defeats the Tampa Bay Buccaneers returned to the Raymond James Stadium and faced the Cam Newton led Carolina Panthers.
Any optimism the Bucs had of winning the game in front of their home crowd was quickly dissipated as Newton ran riot to completely decimate the Bucs woeful defence.
Newton passed for a single touchdown and rushed for three more to put the game well beyond Tampa Bay.
The Bucs were struggling at offence as well with regular quarterback, Josh Freeman missing the game due to a shoulder injury and was replaced by backup Josh Johnson.
Johnson ended up passing for 229-yards and a touchdown and the Bucs other offensive weapons also failed to perform as they lost the game by an embarrassing 38-19 margin.
It was another poor display by a Tampa Bay side that had regressed considerably from their early positive start to the season.
Coach Raheem Morris was incensed at his players for taking needless penalties and panned them for not using their heads on the field.
"I can take getting beat by a better football team. I wish they were. The foolish things that happened in that game, as far as penalties, some of the things that we caused, are just unacceptable. We are not playing like a smart football team right now."
At Jacksonville Jaguars
After losing six straight game, the Buccaneers travelled to Jacksonville to face the Jaguars who were also struggling with their own miserable season.
This was a great opportunity for Tampa Bay to get back to winning ways against a team which had lost three straight games entering into this game.
For the early part of the game it seemed that the Bucs were going to make the most of the opportunity as they went up 14-0 early in the second quarter.
Running back LeGarrette Blount put the Bucs up by 7-0 in the first quarter with a one yard run and quarterback, Josh Freeman who returned to start the game put the Bucs up by 14-0 in the second quarter with a wonderful 13-yard run into the end zone.
However, things started going bad for Tampa Bay as the game wore on.
The Bucs fumbled the ball multiple times and Jacksonville took full advantage as they scored 41 points without an answer in the rest of the game to send Tampa Bay to their seventh straight defeat.
Tampa Bay lost by a huge 41-14 margin as they made the woeful Jaguars look like a Super Bowl contender with such a poor performance.
Quarterback, Josh Freeman said after the game.
"Yeah, once again, turnovers. It seems every time we started to get something going, we'd shoot ourselves in the foot. It makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to win a football game when you turn the ball over like we did."
To be continued....
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