By A to Z Sports,Evan Winter

Copyright yardbarker

We’ve talked about the good from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ big Week 1 win over the Atlanta Falcons so naturally, it’s time to turn around and talk about the bad.Right off the bat, there are two key issues that popped up on Sunday and the irony is the Bucs worked diligently all offseason in hopes of correcting them: the four-man pass rush and creating takeaways on defense.The Bucs had several chances to record multiple takeaways and sacks against the Falcons, but came up short more often than not. On a day where Michael Penix Jr. was pressured at the sixth-highest rate among all quarterbacks (43.5%), the Bucs mustered just one sack from Haason Reddick. The key with those numbers is Penix Jr. was blitzed on 28.3% of his dropbacks, which comes in right around the middle at No. 15. In other words – the Bucs didn’t blitz a whole lot.As we’ve become accustomed to over the years, the pressure was there, but the sacks weren’t.

The Bucs brought in Reddick in order to upgrade the four-man rush and he did his part on Sunday with a team-leading seven pressures and the lone sack. They expect Yaya Diaby and Chris Braswell to make strides in 2025, with Anthony Nelson providing his usual steady play, even if it’s not dynamic. To see Diaby finish with an average 12.5% pressure rate and Braswell and Nelson combine for a goose egg is disappointing. Hell, even Calijah Kancey and Vita Vea weren’t the best with a combined six pressures on 62 pass rush attempts.“I thought we missed quite a few of them. I thought we rushed well – we didn’t finish the play, but we rushed well,” Todd Bowles told reporters Monday. “We’ve got to work on closing the middle out toward the end of the ball game with those guys, not letting the quarterback run up the middle.”There were so many instances where it looked like the Bucs were about to take down Penix Jr., just to watch him take off and make a play. That has to change moving forward or else the Bucs defense is going to find itself in more precarious positions.

Bucs’ top corners also couldn’t make plays on the ball against the Falcons

Bowles talked all offseason how he wanted to ramp up the takeaways on defense and man, it certainly looked like the Bucs figured that out during training camp and the preseason, as the defense was constantly forcing either the Bucs offense or opposing offenses into mistakes on a routine basis.The only remaining question was whether or not it’d carry over when it matters most. One game into the season, it sure as hell hasn’t.The Bucs finished with zero takeaways against the Falcons and the most frustrating part is they could’ve had at least four on the day in the form of recovering a Penix Jr. fumble and three interceptions. The defense couldn’t finish, however, leaving the same sour taste in Bowles and Co.’s mouths that they’ve had since last year.

“We dropped three of them. He [Zyon McCollum] dropped two. [Jamel] Dean dropped one,” said Bowles. “We had our chances. We had our chances. That could have opened the game up, but they covered well. They play very good press coverage and for the most part they were tight on their guys.”McCollum and Dean did play pretty well overall, but the Bucs have to make these plays if they want to live up to their Super Bowl expectations. It’s the kind of plays that separate the elite teams from the good ones and it’s the kind of plays that can flip a game on its head, like Bowles mentioned.The good news is there’s obviously plenty of time to get this up to the standard the Bucs want – they just need to actually make it happen.