And they were dialed in from the very first snap, a six-yard Bucky Irving run on a veer to the left. The Buccaneers’ “success rate” in the first quarter was impressive. For this particular statistic, a play is considered successful when it gains at least 40% of yards-to-go on first down, 60% of yards-to-go on second down and 100% of yards-to-go on third or fourth down.” Each of Tampa Bay’s first 11 plays, including all six on the game-opening drive, qualified as successes.<\/p>\n
That had something to do with Irving, the Bucs’ breakout rookie back, getting the ball early and often. He started the game in a two-back set with Rachaad White and took the first six handoffs of the game. Irving would finish with a season-high 190 yards from scrimmage, 113 on the ground and 77 through the air. At one point he had a 34-yard run and a 42-yard reception on consecutive plays, making up most of an 81-yard drive that ended in Mayfield’s one-yard touchdown pass to Mike Evans.<\/p>\n
“Bucky always brings the aspect of, even if it’s a dirty run \u2013 not all of them are blocked perfect but he’s able to break some tackles and create explosive plays,” said Mayfield. “Anytime you give him that many opportunities, good things are going to happen.”<\/p>\n
The Bucs’ 48 points tied for the most the team has ever scored in a home game, and it was the result of sustained offensive succes through all four quarters (a blocked punt returned for a touchdown didn’t hurt, either). And all of that derived from a very fast start, as the Bucs’ offense did exactly what it set out to do in Week 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And they were dialed in from the very first snap, a six-yard Bucky Irving run on a veer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[1842,235,260,2567,198,7,6,236,36557],"class_list":{"0":"post-166788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-baker-mayfield","9":"tag-carolina","10":"tag-carolina-panthers","11":"tag-carolinapanthers","12":"tag-featured","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-panthers","16":"tag-week-17-2024-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114764446907096158","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}