Quote Originally Posted by Glacies View Post
So I'm not sure if Cam Newton impressed me yesterday or not. I didn't see any of his signature plays, the O-line kept collapsing, he got sacked a handful of times and he threw I think 3 interceptions.
Cam got to know Bucs' DT Gerald McCoy pretty well yesterday. It's a shame yesterday's game was blacked out here, requiring fans that really want to see the Bucs to take to the internet to find streams of the game. Yesterday's game should forever silence the casual fans here that insist Gerald McCoy is a bust because he didn't become Warren Sapp overnight (despite having very similar stats to Sapp's first two years here). What I saw yesterday was that it takes at least two offensive players on every single down to block McCoy, and even so, he was disrupting Newton left and right yesterday, chasing him around the backfield, forcing him to make bad throws, etc. The problem here is that too many fans don't know what solid DT play looks like. They assume they can just check the number in the "sacks" column when there is so much more to it than that.

A couple of other notes on the Bucs' performance... I couldn't be happier they traded down in the draft to take Mark Barron instead of moving up to take Morris Claiborne (or worse, Trent Richardson). Barron showed a lot of very intelligent play yesterday. The real highlight for me defensively was watching rookie LB Lavonte David. It's about time the Bucs had a LB that seemed drawn magnetically to wherever the ball was. They've lacked that since Derrick Brooks. David was involved in play after play, run coverage, pass coverage, the guy was everywhere.

Josh Freeman looked much more poised than last season. If the right throw wasn't there, he didn't try to force it. Schiano really seems to have had an impact on him, and I couldn't be happier.

Fifteen games to go, and we've already won 1/4 as many games as last season!

Go Bucs!