Winston, Bucs at their best on third downs, in red zone

NEP, for the uninitiated, measures the value of each play on the field based on how an average team would be expected to score in each scenario using historical data. Winston’s other scoring tosses went to players with limited fantasy cred – Cameron Brate, Charles Sims and Russell Shepard. I think it’s all good. I was even singing the fight song out there on the field. I never thought I would say this but I would prefer to see Hassleback this year over Luck.

Quarterback Jameis Winston became only the third rookie in league history to throw for five touchdown passes as he and his receivers sliced-and-diced the Eagles’ supposedly improved secondary. Winston kept that drive going by smartly throwing an incomplete pass with his left hand on second-and-16 to avoid a sack. “We are watching a young quarterback grow before our eyes”, Evans said.

While the Eagles went into the game ranked 18th in rushing defense (111.3 per game), they gave up a Tampa team-record 84-yard run and a 58-yarder to Martin, a fourth-year pro from Boise State who had accumulated 165 yards on 52 carries (with a long of 18) in his past three outings combined. He finished 2 yards short of tying Barry Sanders’ record for most without a TD. Sanders had 237 for the Lions against Tampa in 1994. “The mature part is that we talked about it again”. Though the good news is playing in the NFC East means Philly still isn’t out of the division race (the 5-5 NY Giants are currently in first place), that might be the only good news for the team right now.

“But to be able to beat someone in that way and see our team finish a game that way, we hadn’t seen that”. It was the third win in five tries for Tampa Bay, and they can pull to. The Bucs’ Doug Martin rushed for 235 yards. In the pass game, they are allowing about six yards per attempt and have only allowed six touchdowns in their four home games.

After an Eagles offside penalty reduced second-and-19 to second-and-14, Winston completed a 15-yard pass to Mike Evans to give the Bucs a new set of downs.

This o-line opened the gates for Doug Martin, allowing him to achieve his 2nd 200-yard game of his career. Josh Huff had one 39-yard return, but he also made the poor decision to return one kick out of the end zone, only to get to the eight-yard line.

The Eagles stopped the flood of Bucs’ points with a big play of their own, when running back Darren Sproles turned a screen pass into a 35-yard TD that cut the lead to 21-14 with 6:04 left in the first half.

But Winston led the Bucs on a 13-play, 80-yard drive to make it 28-14 at the intermission. As a general guideline, recent running backs have signed contracts ranging from $12-$13 million per year on the high end (Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch) to $7-9 million per year on the more reasonable end (Arian Foster, LeSean McCoy, DeMarco Murray, Matt Forte and Jonathan Stewart).

That gave the Eagles more takeaways by their offense in the past two games than by their defense.

“A game like this will shake your confidence and that’s our biggest enemy because it can destroy you”, Eagles defensive coordinator Bill Davis said. Averaging five yards per carry, Martin ranks second in rushing behind the great Adrian Peterson. Eagles RB Ryan Mathews was deactivated because he didn’t complete the National Football League concussion protocol after being injured last week….