New Orleans Saints: One player determines outcome vs. Tampa Bay Bucs
By Jason Reed
The New Orleans Saints host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 5 of the NFL season in a game that could either be won big or lost big.
The New Orleans Saints host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a division foe who has not been all that great in recent years but has taken at least one game against the Saints in each of the last four seasons.
The Bucs always plays the Saints tough and with Drew Brees out of this game, even though the team is 2-0 without him, there are the concerns of the Bucs sneaking up and taking this game on the road.
Heck, those worries are multiplied after considering the Buccaneers’ latest showing. The Bucs went into Los Angeles and dropped 55 points against the Rams. While Jared Goff was terribly mediocre, it cannot be ignored.
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Personally, I think these worries will end up being a moot point and the Saints will blow out the Buccaneers. However, I am wrong all the time, so I definitely would not trust my word as the definitive prediction for this game.
In reality, there is one person that will decide this game and we will know fairly soon how that person is going to perform and the kind of game this is going to be. And as helpless as it feels, that player is not even on the New Orleans Saints.
Of course, the Saints do need certain players to succeed to win this game. We covered that in a previous article. However, the most important player on the field, in terms of the outcome of this game, is on the Buccaneers.
You know who it is: it is Jameis Winston. Winston is going to dictate how this game goes and whether or not my prediction comes true. The fun part of predicting these games is that Winston is a roulette wheel; there is about a 50/50 chance that he is either good or terrible (with zero and double zero being the rare great game).
Winston has only thrown two interceptions over the last three games and that is why the Bucs have been successful. They should be 3-0 in that span if it was not for a missed field goal and a big component of that success is Winston not stabbing the team in the foot.
In Week 1 we saw the Winston that we all know and love: the guy that throws three interceptions and loses his team the game. The Bucs were actually pretty decent in that game outside of Winston as well.
Tampa Bay has a better running game that is good, not great; they have a really good receiving corps and a 1-2 punch of Mike Evans and Chris Godwin that is extremely difficult to cover; they have a decent defensive line with Ndamukong Suh leading the way and they have a really good linebacker unit.
The linebackers can help make up for the lost ground in the secondary and the offense certainly has the weapons to score a lot of points, as long as Winston is having a good day, not a bad one.
Next. Roster breakdown vs. Bucs. dark
You don’t even have to watch this game to know what happens. Go ahead and take a day away with the family and just look at the box score. If Winston had a good game and less than two touchdowns then the Saints lost. Two or more touchdowns and it will be an easy win.