So it turns out that Greg Schiano was right about Josh Freeman—but that shouldn’t mean much. After all, we were all right about Josh Freeman. Except the Minnesota Vikings, who picked him up as a work-in-progress. Work is long complete, and the building is already crumbling.
That doesn’t mean the Buccaneers’ coach deserves the credit for Tampa Bay’s turnaround, however. The Bucs took another step Sunday with a 24-21 win over the Detroit Lions, in a game the Lions needed to win to open up a lead in the NFC North. Instead, Schiano’s boys—he insists they’re still playing for him, despite various reports to the contrary—won their third straight behind an aggressive defence and one man who does deserve a massive amount of credit for righting the pirate ship.
Over the last two months, rookie quarterback Mike Glennon has officially thrown his name into the NFL’s offensive rookie of the year hat. On Sunday, Glennon took care of the football against a ferocious Lions’ pass rush, continued to look downfield—this time for a receiver other than Vincent Jackson—and handled the flow of what was a topsy-turvy game with a veteran’s aplomb. The choice of Glennon to start over Freeman definitely adds a tick into Schiano’s ‘told you so’ column. That tick, however, is still very lonely, despite three consecutive victories that serve little purpose other than to distance the team from the No. 1-overall selection in the 2014 draft. And, of course, possibly save Schiano’s job.
If anybody watching football needed one more lesson on the difference a quarterback can make to public opinion of the man coaching him, this Bucs team is currently providing the best proof seen in the NFL since Pete Carroll trusted his gut and named Russell Wilson the Seahawks’ starter before week one of the 2012 season. They’re also proving that, with very few exceptions, a team’s running back is only as good as the arm of the man handing him the football.
Schiano had enough faith in his rookie to hastily run his veteran out of town. And that faith is paying off. But before you decide that making the right QB call means that the coach should return, remember that nobody in the media, the football world or even in the stands and sports bars thought that Tampa Bay had a truly awful roster. They were picked by many as a sleeper precisely because it was thought that the talent on the roster could overcome incompetent coaching. It’s taken 11 games, but perhaps the talent is finally doing just that.
Lost amidst all the Schiano scorn, however, is a strange little quirk of the Bucs’ season: The team’s only wins came after they lost their starting running back, starting tight end, second-best receiver and backup running back to season-ending injuries. (They also might need to play without shutdown corner Darrelle Revis, who injured his groin Sunday against the Lions.) But injuries are necessary speedbumps on the road to NFL competence, and that too flows from the poise exhibited by the man under centre.
For a nice lesson on the ripple effect of quarterback play, consider the shifting public perception of the Bucs’ running backs. Tampa entered the season with Doug Martin starting, and many considered him a top-five NFL back in his sophomore season. But Martin was, well, terrible early on, topping 100 yards just once in six games, averaging 3.6 yards per carry and grading out as Pro Football Focus’ 51st running back out of 54 qualifiers. The blame for that at the time was largely placed on his offensive line. It certainly seemed as though the holes Martin had found to break long touchdowns last season were no longer open. That offensive line, however, was the same unit that would turn Martin’s backup Mike James into a shooting star a few weeks later—before James’s own injury—and the same line that carried Bobby Rainey (previously cut by the running-back rich Ravens and Browns) to a three-touchdown day last Sunday. This week, the Lions’ success in bottling Rainey had more to do with a combination of Detroit’s impressive run defence—allowing a paltry 3.8 yards per carry on the season, fourth in the NFL—and porous secondary than a failing of Tampa’s line or Rainey’s effort.
After James’s and Rainey’s emergence, the blame was placed on Martin, and questions swirled about just how good he was. After all, didn’t he have the same quarterback, O-line and coach last season? And hadn’t 55 percent of his rushing yards and 58 percent of his touchdowns come during just five games? Against five teams without a top-ten run defence among them?
Wasn’t it possible Doug Martin had just had a few lucky afternoons? Could Bobby Rainey be just as good?
This is where the quarterbacks come in. Let’s contemplate for a moment just how brutally, terribly bad Josh Freeman has been in his four 2013 starts—three for the Bucs, and one for the Vikings.
Freeman was not so good in 2012. But a not-so-good QB is not necessarily death to running back production. In fact, in an ideal running back’s world, his quarterback would be just good enough to keep defences honest, but bad enough that the team can’t rely on his arm. That’s 2012 Josh Freeman. But it’s not 2013 Josh Freeman. Freeman’s completion percentage fell eight full points from 62.8 in 2011 to 54.8 last season. Not good. But it fell another 12 points in 2013—to 42.9, putting Freeman six percentage points behind Blaine Gabbert, and making them the only two quarterbacks to start more than one game in 2013 while completing less than half their passes.
If you remove Glennon’s first career start—in which the untrusted rookie was instructed to dink and dunk his way down the field for an average of just 4.49 yards per attempt—Doug Martin averaged 4.25 yards per carry in his two games with Glennon operating with an open playbook.
It’s a pretty stark difference: Mike Glennon takes care of the football—with four interceptions through eight games, the same number Freeman has in four starts—and he isn’t afraid of the deep ball. His yards per attempt have climbed steadily since he took the reins, culminating in an impressive 11.6 this week. What’s more, he’s accurate when he looks downfield. Through his first seven games, Glennon was seventh in the NFL in deep accuracy, completing 45.8 percent of his pass attempts of 20-plus yards (Freeman’s 37.5 percent ranks 24th). Glennon, by the way really likes to look deep for Vincent Jackson—of the 231 yards he passed for against the Falcons in week 11, 165 of them (71.4 percent!) were to Jackson.
When your new quarterback looks downfield more often while simultaneously throwing fewer picks, things tend to turn around, for both the team and the running game. It doesn’t take a coaching genius to take credit for the subsequent production. Not that Schiano didn’t try Sunday.
“In six games, he’s turned the ball over once,” the coach said after the Bucs 24-21 win. Glennon had three of his four picks in his first two starts before turning in the run Schiano referred to.
“That’s the kind of football we want to play.”
That’s the kind of football they have to play, if the most criticized coach in the NFL has any hope of returning for 2014.