Through the first three weeks of the season, Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston leads the NFL with 142 pass attempts and has been throwing the ball more often than any first- or second-year quarterback other than Drew Bledsoe.
Winston has also been sacked five times, scrambled three times and had other pass attempts wiped out by penalties to create further imbalance for a team that’s run the ball 71 times. Head coach Dirk Koetter believes that needs to change in the coming weeks.
“In the last two games, we’ve thrown too much,” Koetter said, via the Tampa Bay Times. “We’ve got to quit getting behind by two scores, and we need to run the ball better.”
As Koetter noted, the Bucs have fallen behind in each of their last two games and gone to a pass-heavy attack as they tried to get back into losses to the Cardinals and Rams. They were more balanced in a Week One victory over the Falcons, lending support to the idea that more running will go hand in hand with better results for the team.
Getting that done would be easier with a healthy Doug Martin, who hurt his hamstring in Week Two and didn’t play in Week Three. Martin didn’t practice Wednesday, so the Bucs may need to find a way to get the run game working without him against a Broncos defense that’s not easy to move the ball against under any circumstances.