Advanced Stats Not Kind To Bucs
December 11th, 2025
Covering Bijan Robinson?
A spreadsheeter who works for Amazon and specifically deals with Thursday Night Football had a couple of alarming nuggets about the Bucs, both on offense and defense.
Regular readers know Joe has several times in the past noted that sacks are drive-killers. That less than seven percent of possessions where an offense suffers a sack, ends in a touchdown.
Well, for the Bucs, it is worse. Much worse. Try never.
Per Sam Schwartzstein, as he told Tom Pelissero of NFL.com, the Bucs are the lone team in the NFL this season which has not scored a touchdown after eating a sack. So basically, if an opponent sacks Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield, you can just get up to get a beer and not have to worry about missing something.
So then it was time for a nasty Bucs defensive stat. Per Schwartzstein no linebacker unit in the NFL gives up more receiving yards when a quarterback targets a linebacker than the Bucs.
(Joe tried to find this stat online. Good luck if you can. But while mining for this stat, Joe did stumble upon how the Bucs are the fifth-worst team giving up receiving yards.)
So Schwartzstein believes that tonight, if the Dixie Chicks have any common sense, Kirk “509” Cousins should be targeting Bijan Robinson in the pass game all night long.
Schwartzstein had a moment of laughter when he said if the Dixie Chicks were savvy they would line up Bijan Robinson against Lavonte David on pass plays mainly because David is old. Schwartzstein said he played against David in high school and they are both the same age.
“So that makes [David] old,” Schwartzstein said.
Good thing the Bucs have a defensive coach for a head coach.