His Year: Josh Freeman 2010

Bad offence, bad defence, bad roster? No problem. Josh Freeman will save the day, but he'll do it in the most breathtaking way possible.

Welcome back to my Sports Passion Project everybody, where today, we’re going to be talking about the perils of nepotism hires.

Actually, we’re going to be talking about the perils of one nepotism hire.

Actually, we’re going to talk about the glowing success of this nepotism hire.

When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers traded up in the 2009 Draft to select QB Josh Freeman, everybody knew what’d just happened. It caused quite a bit of ire at the time, because newly hired head coach Raheem Morris and Freeman had been together at Kansas State, which caused some to wonder whether the Bucs really thought Josh was worth trading up for, or if Raheem just wanted his guy.

In reality, being the third QB off the board at 17th overall was not out of bounds as to where Josh should’ve been drafted. He showed potential at K-State that everyone could see, but perception is reality. Josh is, in football terms, a nepotism hire, and the only way he’s going to be able to get that reputation off his back is to play well.

By all accounts, Josh Freeman was everything you’d want in a rookie QB.

He was awful on the field (-0.17 EPA/Play, -4.2 CPOE), but Josh was a smart kid. He understood that his rookie season was never going to go well, especially on a Tampa Bay Buccaneer team that’d been famous for years for refusing to give their QBs anything to work with, favouring defensive performance instead.

Since Mark Clayton and Joey Galloway fell off, there has not been a single good offensive skill position player in Tampa, and that’s about half a decade ago now.

As a result, Josh’s poor on-field performance shocked nobody, least of all himself. It had to be hard to play so badly, when the perception of being a football nepo baby was already out there, but it was all part of the plan. Josh spent his time voraciously studying, desperately trying to learn an NFL-level offence as quickly as possible. When the 2010 offseason came around, he constantly applied pressure to coerce his teammates (who had grown content with being bad offensively a long time ago) into doing extra work with him.

This is crafty stuff. Veteran stuff. Normally, a player going into his second season cannot get away with playing games like this, but Josh knew his social status. He was the first round QB. His teammates were not first round QBs, and not especially talented either. Nobody in Tampa was bulletproof, except for him, and he used this to his advantage. He was not above threatening to pull a Tom Brady, freezing teammates on his bad side out of the offence, in essence forcing them out of town.

Either Josh had exceptional coaching encouraging him to play this card, or he was born for the mental side of the QB position. In the warped world of the NFL, this effort to manipulate and coerce his teammates into working extra hard had the effect of gaining him great respect in the locker room. The extra work helped a great deal in building up a rapport between the young QB and his receiving targets.

People around the Bucs’ building began to notice.

This is a Tampa team that had not had a franchise QB since they forced Doug Williams out of the NFL (for the apparently unforgivable sin of being a black man who was also a top five QB) in 1983. Following that dreadful decision, they lost at least ten games every single season until 1995, and did not make the playoffs again until 1997.

In the interim, this team had only four good QB seasons. One each out of Steve DeBerg and Craig Erickson. Two out of Brad Johnson. That’s four out of 26 seasons. Tampa did win the Super Bowl in 2002, but they did it with a negative EPA/Play offence. Since the play tracking era began in 1999, Tampa has not had a positive EPA/Play offence. I cannot say with certainty before 1999, but based on their yardage numbers, I’m willing to bet the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have not had a positive EPA/Play offence since 1984.

26 years ago.

26 years is a long time to go without good offence.

Imagine not having a good offence for 26 years, and now having Josh Freeman walk in the door, and at least act like a franchise QB. He’s shown nothing on the field yet, but people are noticing his demeanor around the facility. They’re noticing how he’s handling the mental aspects of the game (both on the field and off the field) that QBs must know how to handle. They’re getting a feeling that all but the oldest media heads around the facility have never had.

Is this what a franchise QB feels like?

To their credit, the Bucs do not allow Josh to act in isolation. They try their best to act like they have a franchise QB on the team, drafting WRs in both the second (Arrelious Benn) and fourth (Mike Williams) rounds, and trading a second round pick for polarising TE Kellen Winslow, Jr.. I say polarising because Kellen, while a pretty good player, cannot typically help himself from becoming a large distraction.

Bringing a controversial player like Kellen Winslow, Jr. into the locker room is a massive vote of confidence from the organisation that Josh is going to be able to handle this, and to try to avoid saying that name too many times in this piece, I will just spoil that it works out perfectly from a locker room perspective. Kellen will not be an issue at any point during the 2010 season. I was not in that locker room, but I suspect that the QB gets a great deal of the credit for holding it all together.

Not all of these moves will work out for the Bucs, and the choice to have a second year QB throwing to this cast of receiving targets, the oldest of which is the 27 year old Winslow, and the majority of whom are under the age of 24, is an interesting idea to try to develop a young QB, but give the Bucs some slack. In 2010, they are extremely new to this ‘try to be good at offence’ thing.

In truth, this will hurt the team. This offensive supporting cast is not the quality that you would like it to be, as a team trying to be good at offence. Neither the Benn pick nor the Williams pick will pan out very well. The team’s best receiving option over the course of the season will be Winslow. That is not a compliment to an offensive roster. People used to complain all the time about Tom Brady not having great offensive rosters. The Patriots never approached this level of ineptitude on the outside. That’s the level of roster we’re dealing with here.

Which leaves it all on the 22 year old Josh Freeman to try to hold this thing together. I know Josh has been showing great stuff off the field, but on the field his NFL career has consisted of 346 plays of -0.17 EPA/Play, -4.2 CPOE football. It’s a giant risk to put this all on him. If he doesn’t improve dramatically, this team is going to go 3-13 again, just like in 2009, and if that happens, everybody’s gone. Josh himself likely stays, but Raheem Morris is gone. All of his assistants are gone. Most of the offensive players are gone, and all this work Josh did in the 2010 offseason to ingratiate himself with everybody gets flushed down the toilet.

This is not a fair situation, to put all that pressure on the shoulders of a man who has never been successful at the NFL level before, but like I said, Josh knew he was going to struggle year one, and shows a remarkable ability to let the bad rookie season roll off his back. It simply doesn’t bother him that he played so badly in 2009. It’s as if he doesn’t even remember it, and in the words of several Bucs’ writers around the 2010 offseason, nobody has more confidence in Josh Freeman than Josh Freeman.

This irrational confidence (to steal a phrase from Bill Simmons) has spent a whole football career to this point driving coaches nuts, getting him on the bad side of several teammates, and is not the best mindset for all situations (just ask Jameis Winston), but staring into the face of such a daunting challenge, trying to run a good offence with the best receiving target being Kellen Winslow, Jr., it is the perfect mindset to have. The 2010 Bucs couldn’t have asked for a better man to lead our charge.

So you can understand why when the Bucs’ preseason game against the KC Chiefs ends with a cast on Josh’s throwing hand, it causes serious trepidation.

It’s nothing super major. It’s a fractured fingertip of the throwing-hand thumb, but injuries to throwing-hand fingers are not to be taken lightly. I’ve written an entire article about how two injuries to throwing-hand fingers ended the Super Bowl dreams of each of the NFL’s best two teams in 2015. Sometimes, injuries to fingers seriously mess up the ability to throw the ball accurately, especially when it’s the thumb. It happens even to the best QBs. Don’t think it can’t happen to Josh Freeman.

The Bucs (rightly in my opinion) choose to play this extremely conservatively, immediately shutting Josh down until week one, where we’re hosting the Cleveland Browns in Tampa. This does hinder the prep for the start of the season, preventing Josh from getting the game action that the preseason used to provide in those days. This means the Bucs are going to be behind early in the year, but with each of our first two games coming against subpar opponents, we’re willing to take that chance.

It’s a commentary on the state of the Buccaneers that we’re hosting the Cleveland Browns in week one as just 2.5 point home favourites. That may not seem so bad. We are the favourites after all, but this is Cleveland we’re talking about. This is the tightest spread the Browns have faced in a road game since they played as just one point underdogs on the road against a Cincinnati Bengal team with no Carson Palmer on September 28, 2008, almost two full years ago. They will not face such a spread again this year.

This speaks to what I was telling you earlier about the quality of the Tampa Bay roster. No offence to all my Browns fans out there, but the betting public thinking we’re going to be a relatively even matchup with the 2010 Cleveland Browns is not a compliment, to say the least. To say the most, the public in general thinks that the Bucs are going to be really bad again, not entirely different than the 3-13 2009 version, and we don’t do much to prove them wrong in week one.

We fight the Browns to a dead draw. By this, I mean that they generated -13.64 total EPA, to our -13.44. In situations where the total EPA score is approximately equal like this, you can basically flip a coin to determine the winner, and this time the coin comes up Buccaneers. In such an even game, the Browns miss a FG try at the end of the first half. We do no such thing, and that’s the difference in a game that ends 17-14 in our favour.

Coming back from a 14-3 halftime deficit to defeat the 5.35 expected win 2010 Cleveland Browns by the skin of our teeth in a game that’s as close to a tie as you can get is not a glowing appraisement of our quality as a team. I told you we were going to be sloppy and behind to start the year, and this is what I meant by that. Nevertheless, our risk to play it safe with Josh in the preseason has paid off, as we’ve won this game anyway, and we move to 1-0.

If you thought the spread for week one was insulting, take a look at week two, as we go on the road to Charlotte to face the Carolina Panthers, and we do it as four point underdogs. This is not a good Carolina team. It’s one expected to be almost as bad as we are. Their over/under for the 2010 season was set at seven wins. As we know, they’re going to come in well under that, and be the worst team in football in 2010, but even against the seven win team that the public thought the 2010 Carolina Panthers were going to be, it is not a good sign that we are four point underdogs.

This still is the worst team in football though, so we walk out of this game with an easy 20-7 win, off an impressive 0.36 EPA/Play performance from Josh, the best game of his young career as of yet, but I cannot ignore that this game comes with one of the oddest statistical profiles I have ever seen.

What I need you to notice about this offensive production graphic is two things. First, the Bucs generated 0.06 EPA/Play as a team, on just a 28 percent success rate. That’s a 62nd percentile offensive performance off a second percentile success rate, as only 17 of our 60 offensive plays made us more likely to score, but our big plays were very big.

Still, this means that the Carolina Panther defence had quite an easy time shutting us down, and only through a few well-timed chunk plays did we do as much scoring as we did. A win is a win, but this is not how you want to be defeating a Carolina team that is going to finish this season with a 2-14 record.

The main reason for all this futility is our rushing offence, which touched the ball 31 times, and made us more likely to score on just five occasions, but Josh’s success rate is in the purple too, meaning he was not exactly a man amongst boys out there. If this is going to be a good team, something has to change, because we will not be able to find the well-timed chunk play against better opposition.

How about the Pittsburgh Steelers to play the part of the better opposition?

That’s right. The number one defence in the NFL, that is going to win the AFC at the end of this season, is coming into our stadium to play a week three matchup. They do not bring Ben Roethlisberger with them on this occasion, so they come into our building as just two point favourites, but all they need to beat us is that number one defence of theirs.

This Pittsburgh Steeler game is a gut check that we fail. We miserably fail. We do operate at a 45 percent success rate as a team (50% for Josh personally) against the best defence in the NFL, which is a beacon of hope hidden inside this absolute disaster, but this is our first game against a team who isn’t one of the worst in the league, and in this first game against real competition, we’ve generated -0.21 EPA/Play as a team, and lost 38-13.

When you’re writing an article about a QB, even one with an injured throwing thumb, it’s not fun to see games like this come up.

It’s no fun to write about games that are not competitive at any point. I can tell people until the cows come home that Josh actually played fairly well on a play to play basis against the best defence in the NFL, with very limited offensive options to back him up, while still being hindered by the thumb injury, and that his top level results are dependent on just a few big plays, all of which were negative this time, but nobody wants to hear that. In a 38-13 loss, nobody wants to look for the positive. They want to talk about how this guy who’s supposed to be our franchise QB just got outplayed handily by Charlie Batch.

Shout out Charlie Batch by the way. 0.64 EPA/Play in this game. Did any of you know he ever played a game that good? I certainly didn’t.

As the Buccaneers enter our early week four bye, there’s a lot of talk. Not much of it is positive. We are 2-1, but beating two of the worst teams in the league, one of them by the skin of our teeth after coming back from an 11 point deficit, is not encouraging.

Josh has generated -0.02 EPA/Play in his 103 plays so far, which is much better than he was in 2009, but still below average, and nothing to write home about from a man who got a lot of hype in the offseason. There have been a lot of Bucs QBs over the years who could generate -0.02 EPA/Play. Josh is supposed to be here to give us something more than that, but he’s not doing it right now.

This probably should’ve been expected out of a young QB with such a middling offensive roster, but the disappointment is hard to hide given the specific circumstances of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who have had about three good offences in the history of the franchise, and none of them in the last 26 years.

This disappointment is probably a sign of a spoiled fanbase, as despite the continually bad offence, the Bucs were actually one of the most successful franchises in the NFL in the 2000s decade, but there’s just something so alluring about the prospect of a franchise QB. Nobody is under the delusion that Josh is a bust just three games into his second season, but to see him fail so horribly up against the better opposition caused disappointment that could not be masked.

But I know something that Bucs’ fans in 2010 do not know.

Nobody knew as they were expressing their disappointment over the bye week that things are about to take a turn for the better. As Josh’s thumb finally fully heals over the bye week, the Bucs are about to experience a stretch of QB play the likes of which this franchise has never experienced, and will not experience again until Tom Brady joins the team, a decade into the future.

The 2010 Tampa Bay Buccaneers are not a good roster, but Josh Freeman is going to spend the next 13 weeks of his life carrying them the way no Buccaneer team has ever been able to be carried by their QB before. There will be thrills and spills and wildness abound, but the one thing that will be constant is Josh, with his team on his shoulders, trying his best to be the franchise QB that was promised.

Welcome to Josh Freeman’s Year.

It begins with a week five matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals, where Josh does what he does best, picking apart a really bad football team, albeit one that’s still favoured to beat us.

The 2010 Cincinnati Bengals are an awful football team. They have won two of their first four games, but one of those wins is against that same horrendous Carolina Panthers team I discussed earlier, and another of their first four games is a loss to the Cleveland Browns. It’s not exactly a great track record, but as we march into Cincinnati to try to add another loss to their column, none of that prevents them from being full seven point favourites to beat us.

We are on the road, and just lost 38-13 to the last AFC North team we played, but come on now. A full touchdown? That seems a bit steep, but once again is a good representation of what Josh is dealing with here. The 2010 Cincinnati Bengals are a 4-12 football team, and touchdown favourites over us.

How bad does that make us?

This football game follows an odd pattern, one that will become a trend for the 2010 Bucs. As the season goes along, we fall into the habit of digging ourselves holes to climb out of in the first quarters of these games. We saw that earlier in the season, having to come from behind 14-3 against Cleveland, but once is a fluke. Twice is a habit, which means that our bad habit of beginning every game with a deficit starts right here, as we fail to score any points in the first quarter, allowing Cincinnati to take a 7-0 lead on us early. When Josh throws an interception on his first drive of the second quarter, it makes you feel really thankful that Carson Palmer throws a pick six of his own to tie this game at seven, keeping us in touch.

Things are looking better around the end of the first half, when Josh completes a pass to Mike Williams, and he is running free inside the ten, but when he fumbles the ball on the Bengal four yard line, all of that hope drains away again, as we end the first half behind 10-7, without any offensive points.

The 2010 Tampa defence is not good. It’s going to finish just 20th in EPA/Play allowed this year, but it did a pretty good job holding up for us this time, and thank goodness for that, because coming out for the second half, the offence is ready to go, at last scoring a touchdown at 5:33 of the third to take a 14-10 lead. This takes us over 50 percent estimated Win Probability (according to NFLFastR) for the first time all day, but as if that triggered the football Gods to jump into action, this leads immediately into a Bengal FG, and a fumble on the ensuing kickoff return, which leads directly to a Bengal TD, and a 21-14 deficit.

This badly hurts our chances of winning, as does punting from the Bengals’ 40 yard line while losing by seven points in the fourth quarter, such is the conservatism of Raheem Morris, who is one of the most aggressive fourth down play callers in the NFL in his current (2024) job as HC of the Atlanta Falcons, but not in 2010.

That decision to punt drops our estimated WP to ten percent, a whopping 43 percent worse than it was just ten minutes ago, when we were looking a good bet to win this game. We do not touch the ball again until there is five minutes remaining, at which point a three and out looks like it’s back breaking. We are bailed out by Carson Palmer throwing another INT to get us the ball back around midfield, but if this were a typical Buccaneer team with a typical Buccaneer QB, our offence would not convert on this chance, and it just wouldn’t matter.

However, I assure you that this is not just another Buccaneer offence. Allow me to introduce you to fourth quarter Josh Freeman, one of the most intimidating offensive forces I’ve seen in my football watching life.

Getting the ball on the 50 with 2:18 left behind by seven points is not a great spot to try to win a football game from, but Josh makes it look like one. It takes 44 seconds to shoot down the field into the end zone, and tie this game at 21. This is a great way to begin a comeback, but it still involves giving the Bengals the ball back in a tie game with 1:21 left.

It feels like we’ve left them too much time, and NFLFastR agrees, as it gives them a 76 percent chance to win still. It’s only when Palmer throws yet another interception, dropping the Bengals' WP all the way to 29 percent (putting this INT on a short list of the worst offensive plays in the history of the league), that we actually get the chance to pull this off.

It takes Josh just one completion, deep down the sideline to Micheal Spurlock, to put us in position to kick the game winning FG, and as it flies through the uprights to put the finishing touch on a 24-21 win, maybe this kid is the real deal.

After a first 57 minutes not worthy of note, Josh played like a crazy man in the final three, leading the Bucs on two scoring drives, stealing a win on the road away from a Cincinnati Bengal team that desperately needed it. Obviously, it would’ve been preferable to just not be behind to begin with, but as I say all the time on this publication, all four quarters count the same.

Most of the time, I use that phrase to defend poor fourth quarter performances dragged to wins by elite first quarter performances, but in this circumstance I’m using it to mean the opposite. Oftentimes, we get so caught up conceptualising the fourth quarter as a separate entity that it’s easy to forget that the value generated there counts just the same as well.

Did Josh play very badly in the first half? Yes he did, but he stuffed enough value into the final minutes of the game that he ended up with 0.33 EPA/Play on the day, handily outplaying Carson Palmer, and dragging the Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicking and screaming into a win that looked out of reach for almost the entire game.

Take a look at this WP graph. This is a fairly typical looking WP graph for a team getting carried by their QB. Get used to seeing a lot of this with the 2010 Buccaneers:

Unbelievably, this win takes us to 3-1, and into a matchup for NFC South supremacy in week six, against the New Orleans Saints. Should we win this game, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would be leading the NFC South for the first time since the epic collapse from 9-3 to 9-7 at the end of the 2008 season that led to the team hiring new head coach Raheem Morris, which may or may not have been crucial to the team drafting Josh in the first place.

It’s yet another gut check that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers spectacularly fail, but this article is not about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It’s about Josh Freeman, and he showed up ready to play. Look at how he did against the kings of the NFC South:

That purple is deep in the rush offence row, meaning Josh was forced into being the entire offence, dropping back to pass on 70 percent of the snaps against the defending Super Bowl champions, and the young man in his 15th NFL start did not embarrass himself. This game was over almost instantly, as the Saints shot out to a 17-0 lead as Josh was enduring his typical slow start in the first quarter, but when your QB generates 0.2 EPA/Play in a game, it’s hard to blame him for the loss.

That’s exactly what Josh did, and while he could not match Drew Brees’ 0.47, meaning the Bucs were never going to win this, it is not his fault that the team lost by 25 points.

This is the type of loss that I’ve always hated a QB to get blamed for. The team lost by 25 points, and did it while generating negative EPA as an offence. That I can’t deny, but just what do you want the QB to do in circumstances like this?

With the defending champions knowing that you’re going to be throwing on every play, it’s just hard to do any better than 0.2 EPA/Play, especially when your best receiver is Kellen Winslow, Jr.. That’s the situation Josh got put into. Did he shine? Not really, but tell me the Buccaneer QB over the last 26 years that would generate more than 0.2 EPA/Play when the defending Super Bowl champions know he’s passing on every play.

I’ll wait.

That moves us to week seven, which is a game that really shows the character of this team. For better and for worse.

We’re at last favoured to win a game again, for just the second time all season, coming in as three point home favourites over the St. Louis Rams, a team who is going to finish the season with 7.51 expected wins. Not a good team, but not as bad as some of the teams we’ve faced so far.

I suppose I’ll accept being favoured to beat anybody at this point, but for goodness’ sake, can we get out of our own way?

We fall behind 17-6 going into the halftime break, as once again we barely put up any offence in the entire first half, but come out in the second half much better. We score on three of our four second half possessions, including a masterful final drive that scores the game winning TD with just five seconds remaining, to seal a nail biter of an 18-17 win, against a team that it really ought not to take a nail biter to win against.

Nevertheless, Buccaneer fans are beginning to get excited at this point in time. There are significant flaws all over the field on offence (notably the inability to score any points in the first half), but these flaws are less significant than any other offence this team has ever had. Also, after the 3-13 malaise of 2009, it’s extremely fulfilling to have more wins than that through just six weeks, now sitting at 4-2.

Week eight takes us on the road to Phoenix to take on the Arizona Cardinals, who (with their 3.01 expected wins) are the second worst team the NFL has to offer in 2010. Nevertheless, they are three point favourites over us, and once again the Tampa Bay Buccaneers do not do anything to prove anybody wrong on that, but Josh (individually) does.

Josh goes above and beyond again, generating 0.37 EPA/Play against an Arizona defence that was rounding into form as one of the top units in the NFL throughout the first half of the 2010s, but once again he plays well almost exclusively after the first half ends. Ten offensive points in the first half is better than normal for us, and with two pick sixes, those ten points actually get us out of the first half with a 24-14 lead. We even push it to 31-14 in the third quarter.

It looks for once like this is going to be an easy win, but we should’ve known better.

There are no easy wins.

Not with this team.

A Cardinal touchdown, a fumble from LeGarrette Blount on the first play of our response possession, and another Cardinal touchdown, tighten this game up to 31-28 as the third quarter comes to a close, and through no fault of his own, Josh is going to have to play yet another close game in the fourth quarter. After one failed offensive possession (killed by an 11 yard sack), the Cardinals get the ball again, and they score again, taking a 35-31 lead on us with ten minutes left in the game.

How can this happen?

I’m convinced that the 2010 Buccaneers are the only team in NFL history that can surrender a 17 point lead to the 2010 Arizona Cardinals.

I’m exaggerating of course, but not by much. The 2010 Arizona Cardinal offence is not just bad. It’s so bad that it redefines the meaning of bad offence. Their -0.22 EPA/Play as a team in a full season sample in 2010 is the ninth worst of the entire play tracking era, and this is the offence that we’ve just allowed to score 21 unanswered points on us.

This is not Josh’s fault of course. He’s touched the ball four times throughout this comeback process. He doesn’t play defence, but yet again he’s left holding the bill, having to pay for his team’s insistence on never beating anybody by a wide margin. There are now ten minutes left, and we are behind by four points to the Arizona Cardinals.

This is not a position any player wants to be in.

The early 2010s Cardinals were often awful, because they boasted some of the worst offence in the history of the league. Three of the ten worst offences of the last 25 years by EPA/Play come from the 2010s Arizona Cardinals, but this defence is for real. They’re not remembered very well, primarily because of their offence, but I promise you, this is not a defence you want to be trailing in the fourth quarter. They will shut you down in a heartbeat.

Unless you’re Josh Freeman. In that case, you make it look easy.

It does get slightly hairy to begin with, having to convert a fourth down to get the first ten yards of this possession, but from then onwards, there is no resistance. A 53 yard completion gets the Bucs in position to score, LeGarrette Blount pounds it in, and we’ve moved back into the lead, 38-35. From here, the Arizona offence remembers who they are, turning the ball over on each of their final two tries, so 38-35 is the score that stands.

We’ve moved to 5-2, but that took a lot of unnecessary work.

Once again, Josh was up for the challenge, generating 0.37 EPA/Play against a quality defensive opponent, but we’ve again failed to prove anybody wrong for installing us as an underdog against such poor quality of opposition. We’ve again played a close game against an opponent who is not in our class, and even though we’ve won it again, this cannot sustain forever.

We’ve won all four of our one possession games this year. That’s a pattern that will not continue, particularly once we get playing the better teams, and this is the context that sees us into our second chance at taking the NFC South lead.

For week nine, we have to go on the road to Atlanta to take on a Falcons team who have a young QB of their own that they’re excited about. 2010 is the first great Falcons roster that the young Matt Ryan, drafted one year before Josh (in 2008), has been a part of. Through the first eight weeks of the season, they have matched our 5-2 record, and due to the unexpected falloff of the Saints (who are currently one game behind, despite beating us a couple weeks ago), this is the game that will determine who sits in the drivers’ seat of the NFC South moving forward.

This game means just a little bit more than that though. The division lead is great and all, but when two young QBs with such promise, each in the same division, match up, there’s always a heightened level of importance to get the leg up on each other.

It’s a rarer situation than you may think to have two QBs in the same division, neither of whom have reached their second contract yet, but both of whom are already good. It’s not a situation that existed in the 2024 or 2023 or 2022 NFL. Not since Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert were both rookie contract players in the 2020 and 2021 AFC West has the NFL seen a situation like this, but it is clear and present in 2010 between Matt Ryan and Josh Freeman.

It’s not exactly a fair fight between the two, as Matt has Tony Gonzalez, Roddy White, and a top ten defence, meanwhile Josh has to deal with a 20th place defence, and try to make up for it throwing to Kellen Winslow, Jr., and Mike Williams. This illustrates pretty clearly why despite having the same record in the same division, the Falcons are ten point home favourites over us. They’re better than the Buccaneers pretty much everywhere, but there is one thing that we have that the Falcons do not. The same X-factor we’ve had in every game all season.

Josh Freeman. For good and for bad.

The bad is the same as normal, as we score no points in the first quarter, allowing the Falcons to take a 14-0 lead on us as the second quarter begins. This reduces NFLFastR’s expectation of our win probability to six percent before we can even get out of the starting gate, but no matter. We’re the Buccaneers. Fighting unnecessarily steep uphill battles is what we do. Every team has to have an identity. This is ours. We have the Falcons right where we want them.

Even with that being said, our offensive malaise cannot continue all the way into the half like it normally does. If we let it go that long, the Falcons will be too far ahead. We will not be able to catch them. We have to turn it on a bit sooner this time.

A great kickoff return all the way to the Atlanta 32 is a great start, and after a wasted play of a three yard rush by LeGarrette Blount, it takes Josh only two completions, one each to the rookies Benn and Williams, to get his team into the end zone, cutting the deficit to 14-7.

This is the kind of thing I mean when I say the true clutch players show up in the second and third quarters even more than they show up in the fourth. If we had failed to score on this possession, we would’ve been in oblivion. Armageddon. The Falcons do respond with a FG to make it 17-7, but if that would’ve been 17-0 this game would’ve been over, even with fourth quarter Josh Freeman on the team. Instead, we get the ball with five and a half minutes left in the first half, and Josh goes to work again.

It’s not the most fun possession in the world. When the receivers are what they are in Tampa, you have to do a lot of taking what the defence gives you. Josh does that, completing passes of 13 yards, nine yards, and a scramble for four yards, taking us all the way to the two minute warning still on our own side of the 50. I’m beginning to worry that this is too slow, but when the opening Josh had been waiting for finally materialises, he pounces on it.

A 58 yard touchdown pass to Mike Williams, moving the score to 17-14 as we go into half.

This is not preferable, but compared to where we were at the end of the first quarter, this is quite the improvement in circumstances. It undeniably sucks to score on two of your three real first half possessions and finish the half trailing, but when you’re Josh Freeman, this is your life. He’s been dealing with it for half a season now. It certainly won’t throw him off this time.

Or maybe it will.

Getting the ball coming out of the break, after two useless run plays leaves us staring at third and five, Josh finally cracks, throwing an ill-advised INT. Three minutes later the Falcons are in the end zone, and we’re multiple possessions behind again, 24-14. The Tampa offence comes out in a shell on our next possession, giving Josh the ball only on second and third and longs. Predictably, this fails, and we punt the ball away again, putting us right back in the position we were trying to get out of for the whole first half, an estimated WP of six percent.

This gets worse when Atlanta kicks another FG to make it 27-14, but it gets better again when a kickoff return touchdown narrows the deficit to 27-21, and we get our golden chance when at last the Falcons can run just three offensive plays on their try in response, giving us the ball in the fourth quarter with the opportunity to take the lead.

We have not failed a single fourth quarter possession yet this season with an opportunity to take the lead. Every time the lead has been available (six points or less) in the fourth, the lead has changed hands, putting us in front. With how many one possession games we’ve played, this is a great track record in the tight ones, but all streaks have to end.

It looks like this ending is going to come right at the beginning, as a third and 13 at our own one yard line is one of the bleakest spots an offence can possibly be in. It’s so bad that a delay of game penalty on third down actually moves the ball forward, due to a quirk in the rulebook that existed at the time. We’re facing -2.6 expected points from this position, but expected point models were not calibrated with the idea of fourth quarter Josh Freeman in mind.

He’s got this.

A 44 yard completion to Micheal Spurlock gets us out of our own end zone, and a good deal of the way to scoring some points on this possession, but on second down, Josh makes another ill-advised throw, throwing the ball directly to CB Brent Grimes on a route that Mike Williams was never going to win, showing that even fourth quarter Josh Freeman is fallible.

Thankfully, Atlanta goes three and out again, so this INT is not game ending, but the great field position means we have to start our final drive of this game from inside our own ten yard line again. This time, it’s LeGarrette Blount that gets us out of the bad situation, with a 21 yard run to get the drive started right right way, and in truth this looks a lot like the drive at the end of the first half.

There’s nothing special here, and there’s no need to hurry, as we got the ball with ten minutes left initially. No need to leave Matt Ryan too much time to come back down the field on us. This drive is just as slow as you’d want it to be, taking only what the Atlanta defence cannot take away. A nine yard completion here, and an eleven yard completion there. That kind of thing. We matriculate this all the way down to the Atlanta 44 at the five minute mark, where an expertly executed flee-flicker play nets us the ball at the Atlanta 11.

This is it. This is the position we’ve been looking for this whole game. It’s just like Cincinnati. We’re going to sneak out of here with a win after all.

First down is a wasted rush to LeGarrette Blount that goes for no yards. That hurts, but second down is a rush that goes for seven yards, exactly what we needed. That brings this to third and three at the four yard line, and the first down being available at the one ensures that Josh can use the whole field. No need to necessarily throw into the end zone. That’s perfect for third and fourth down throwing, with the best fourth quarter QB in the world in 2010.

Except for the fact that third down is another LeGarrette Blount rush, this one for two more yards, leaving us with fourth and one at the two yard line.

Going for this is a non-decision. Of course we’re going for it, but with the television camera nosing into the Tampa Bay huddle, you can see Josh Freeman reading out the play with an absolutely furious look on his face.

You’re not telling me…

That’s exactly what I’m telling you.

From the same brain geniuses who have brought you the last 26 years of Tampa Bay Buccaneer offence, after accounting for 53 of the yards that got Tampa into the red zone, the Bucs elected to run four plays from there, and not allow Josh Freeman to touch the ball on any of them.

LeGarrette Blount is stuffed. We turn the ball over on downs at the one and a half yard line, and I am dumbfounded. Brian Billick on commentary is dumbfounded. Buccaneer fans everywhere are dumbfounded. I do not care about the 2010 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I’m a fan of a different team in a different conference, and I am from 15 years in the future, but as I watched this four play sequence, I was making gestures I’d rather not admit to, and saying words I’m glad my mother was not there to hear me say.

What are we doing?

We’ve won the last four one possession games by just giving the ball to Josh and letting him handle it, but now that we’re 11 yards from being the NFC’s number one seed, it’s LeGarrette Blount’s time to shine? That doesn’t add up. That falls far short of adding up. I’d call this a bad decision, but that’s an insult to bad decisions. I’ve talked a lot of crap about Raheem Morris in his days of coaching the Falcons in the modern NFL, but I don’t think I’ve seen him make any worse decision than this one.

There’s no winning from this position. The Falcons run the clock out, and we lose. We were so close to having the NFC’s best record at the halfway point, but we don’t have it. We lost. We’re a 5-3 football team, and I’m left wondering just how to reconcile this failure in an article that’s not about the team, but about the QB of the team.

It was a fantastic final drive out of Josh. He converted two clutch third downs, and drew a pass interference penalty on a deep ball that got the Bucs right where they needed to be. He just wasn’t allowed to see it through, for reasons that I cannot explain to you.

Look at this WP graph. I told you things like this would be common in Tampa:

That’s a lot of black there. In the end, this goes down as yet another gut check moment that the Buccaneers have proven that they are not ready for, but this time, I refuse to allow Josh Freeman to take the plunge with his teammates. In the most important game of his NFL career to date, he came out and generated 0.48 EPA/Play, despite two turnovers (his only multiple INT game of the season), which is extremely hard to do.

This compared to Matt Ryan’s 0.31 means Josh won his battle. He did what he was supposed to do. He defeated his primary adversary, both on a rate basis and a volume basis, and was poised to help the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeat their primary adversaries as well, but the team would not let him. At the crucial point of the game, they ripped the ball out of his hands.

Once again, look at this offensive production breakdown. I was talking about how this was not a fair fight earlier, and this should demonstrate that for you.

Would the Bucs have been extraordinarily lucky to win this game? Absolutely, but the fault for that does not lie with Josh Freeman. Maybe you should talk to the rushing offence, and their seven successful plays on 24 tries. Perhaps you should talk to whoever’s decision it was to hand the ball off 24 times. Strictly in the passing game, the Buccaneers won this football game. Josh Freeman outdid Matt Ryan, but in the grand scheme of the football game, it was not enough.

It could’ve been enough if Josh were allowed to touch the ball at the end, but he wasn’t. We can blame everybody in the world for that, but there’s no purpose. We’re 5-3 now. This loss pretty much cements the fact that we will not be winning the division. Now that we know that, it’s time to move on, and try to get ourselves a wild card position.

With both of our next two games coming against easy opponents (Carolina again and SF), we actually win them both easily, with no one possession game shenanigans required. In the SF game, we again fail to score any points until deep into the second quarter, but when the opponent is starting Troy Smith at QB, you can get away with that.

This leaves us at 7-3, but due to the quality of the early 2010s NFC, this is not good enough. Even a 7-3 record is not sufficient to be in playoff position. It’s barely sufficient to be the first team out. It’s looking entirely plausible that it’s going to require 11 wins just to make a wild card position, and for a team that plays as many wild games as we do, that’s an extremely intimidating proposition.

It’s especially intimidating in the wake of games like week 12 in Baltimore. The Ravens are roughly as good as we are, but because we’re the Bucs, they’re still eight point favourites to beat us, and for once our penchant for slow starts comes back to bite us. Josh generates negative EPA in a game for the first time since week three against Pittsburgh, as we fall behind 17-3 at the end of the first half, and just run out of time trying to make our comeback, eventually losing by seven points.

Week 13 at home against Atlanta is a different story. It’s another one possession game against the NFC’s top team, but this time it’s one that we lose straight up. We once again come within 19 yards of winning it, but Josh throws an INT right there, ending our final chance to score a TD, and losing the game 28-24.

This loss hurts badly.

It’s not just another loss but another conference loss, meaning we are not only out of standings position at 7-5, but also out of tiebreaker position.

It’s not common to have a 7-5 record and have your season be virtually over, but in the early 2010s in the NFC this is a more common phenomenon than you’d expect. We’re not only not in a wild card position anymore, we are not even the first team out of a wild card position now, as the 8-4 Packers and 8-4 Giants have run off to have that fight for the sixth seed without us.

We’re not going to play against either of those teams, meaning the tie break we’re going to need over them is NFC conference record, and with our NFC record sitting at 5-3 with four conference (and total) games to go, compared to Green Bay’s 6-3 and New York’s 6-2 NFC records, we’re going to need some help there as well. We don’t just need these teams to lose. We need them to lose in the NFC conference, all the while we don’t lose any more games for the rest of the year.

It’s bleak.

I feel awful for Tampa Bay fans that they’ve been put in this position, as with a slightly weaker conference there could still be a theoretical chance for an 11-5 first round bye in the position we’re in. Not in 2010 though. From this particular 7-5 position, our chances of even making the playoffs are between slim and none, especially with one final game against the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints (who are still in the fight for the number one seed) yet to come.

Regardless, the only way to win four games in a row is to win one game in a row first, so this takes us on the road to play the Washington Redskins in week 14. The Skins (like a lot of teams we’ve played this year) are not very good. Like we’ve done against a lot of teams this year, we score just three offensive points in the first half, but like we’ve done against a lot of teams all year, we pull the game out anyway.

This is the luckiest win of the entire season, without doubt. It took two missed Washington field goals, plus a missed Washington extra point, to get us out of their stadium with a 17-16 win. We lost the total EPA battle badly, 1.59 to 9.75, but following with the pattern, this is not Josh’s fault. I’m beginning to feel like a broken record, but just look at the offensive production breakdown.

How many times can a man ask why we’re handing the ball off on 43 percent of all offensive plays before you (or, more importantly, Raheem Morris) begin to realise the problem with the 2010 Buccaneers?

It’s not Josh Freeman. I’ll guarantee you that much.

This game is a loss, a 7-6 record, and a dead season, nine times out of ten. Requiring two missed FGs plus a missed extra point try to win 17-16 is not a solid strategy for sustained winning, but the reason for that is not Josh Freeman. His struggles in the first quarter are well documented, and got us off to a big deficit again. Of course we’d rather go without that, but taking the whole game into account, how much better than 0.41 EPA/Play can you ask for?

These Buccaneers are finding ways over and over again to play close games that should not be close, and in this case, win games that we should not win. This is why the public still has no belief in us (we were only one point favourites over the 5-7 Redskins), and when we get right to the heart of the matter, it is the reason why our playoff hopes were looking so bleak, even with the 8-5 record.

Were. That’s past tense.

Lady luck looks fondly on us twice in week 14, as in addition to the lucky win in Washington, Green Bay takes an NFC Conference loss to the Detroit Lions, meaning their conference record has dropped to 6-4 with only three games left to play. This officially means that we are back in position again in relation to Green Bay, with our 6-3 NFC record coming in ahead of Green Bay’s, albeit with one extra conference game left to play. We’ve passed one of the teams we’ve needed to pass.

The New York Giants, with both their 9-4 total record and 7-2 conference record, are still ahead of us, but those who are dedicated readers of mine know that in just one week’s time, Michael Vick is going to orchestrate a ridiculous fourth quarter comeback, making up 21 points in the fourth to hand the Giants a conference loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

His Year: Michael Vick 2010

Looking back in hindsight, it’s all coming up Tampa Bay. All we need to do to put ourselves in the driver’s seat to the final NFC playoff position is defeat the same Detroit Lions team who’ve put us in this situation to begin with. They helped us tremendously last week. Now, they’re looking to play spoiler again.

The 2010 Detroit Lions are an odd team in NFL history. They’ve drafted Matthew Stafford by this point, but they’re not yet ready to actually use him due to shoulder injuries. The team has returned to respectability anyways in 2010, even without Matt there. They’re only going to finish with six wins, but if you watched the 2008 or 2009 Detroit teams, you understand just how much of a privilege six wins is.

It then makes sense when I tell you that I’m encouraged by the four point spread in our favour for this game. That’s a small spread against a team such as Detroit, but it’s the widest spread we’ve had in our favour all season against a real (read: not Carolina) NFL team. Detroit has been awful for years, but they’re not awful anymore. They’re merely bad now, and you know what these Buccaneers do with bad teams.

Of course you know. We play them in razor thin games for no reason whatsoever, because we cannot figure out how to score in the first quarter.

It starts out perfectly normally. We punt away each of our first two possessions, as Josh can find just three successful plays in the entire quarter. It seems as if we’ve found a loophole though, as on third and 13, in the midst of the final play of the first quarter, just as it looks like we’re going to have to punt away our third possession, the clock hits zeroes.

I suppose when the clock hits zeroes, the first quarter is technically over, and Josh can go back to being an elite QB again. He hits Cadillac Williams for a 15 yard completion to convert this third down, and Josh has to throw just two more passes. Both are complete, for 37 yards and the touchdown that digs us out of the typical 7-0 deficit we’d built for ourselves.

Detroit cannot score immediately, and on our next touch, no passes hit the ground, and we see no third downs, walking down the field to score another touchdown to make this a 14-7 game. Detroit uses up the rest of the second quarter kicking a FG to narrow the score to 14-10, but then gets the ball coming out of the locker room for the second half, and scores a touchdown, putting us behind again, 17-14.

Our one offensive possession of the third quarter is killed by an offensive holding penalty, taking second and eight from the Detroit 39 to second and 18 from the Detroit 49, and a promising possession ends in a punt. The Lions use almost the entire quarter grinding out their other two possessions.

That gets us into the fourth quarter, with the ball, behind by only three. This is where we’ve lived all season, very rarely failing on late game chances to take the lead, and it’s no different this time. We get in a bit of a bad spot trying to convert the first ten yards, but Josh bails us out with a 16 yard sideline ball. We get in a bit of a rough spot in second and 15 trying to convert the second ten yards, but Josh bails us out with a 14 yard scramble, something he’s always been good at throughout all this, despite being 6’6”, and 250+ pounds, which prevents him from being very fast.

He’s always had good feet (evidenced by his 5.53% sack rate), but this is yet more evidence that scrambling is at its heart a passing skill, and we all understand by now that Josh Freeman is a very good passer.

Funnily enough, right as I say that, Josh takes a back breaking 14 yard sack on first down, to put us in yet another tricky situation, second and 24, but we get bailed out yet again, as a screen pass to Mike Williams goes for 26 yards and a first down, and when we end up in first and 15 after a false start penalty, it’s Blount that bails us out this time, taking the ball for 27 yards on second and 15.

That’s now four times we’ve had to come from behind the sticks in a row, and we’ve done it while seeing only one third down. This is what a great offence looks like, but as I’ve said over and over, this is not a great offence. Our rush offence is 25th. Our best receiver is Kellen Winslow, Jr., but you just cannot keep fourth quarter Josh Freeman down.

When one further completion nets us first and goal at the one yard line, we find ourselves in a familiar situation.

Do you remember Atlanta, when we were in a goal line spot, and Josh didn’t even get a chance to touch the ball?

Well, when first down is a QB sneak attempt (not really a QB touch) that fails, and second down is a rush attempt that goes backwards, we are in serious danger of falling into that same trap again. That cannot happen. This game (and every game) are must-win for us. We cannot fail to score while also failing to allow our best offensive player to touch the ball for a second time in the same season. If that were to happen, our home fans would mutiny.

I’m not surprised at all when we come out in empty formation on third and goal from the two yard line, and I’m even less surprised when Josh drops a dime over the shoulder into the hands of Kellen Winslow, but I am extremely surprised when it all gets called back on an offensive pass interference penalty.

This drops us back to third and 12, whereupon an incomplete pass hits the turf. On fourth and 12 we cannot possibly go for it, forcing us into kicking a FG with nine minutes left to go, which ties this game at 17.

We’ve failed to take the lead, but still with nine minutes remaining in the game, we get another chance, as Detroit punts the ball back to us with 5:48 left on the clock, in a tie game, just begging us to score this ball, and sneak back into the locker room with the win, in the same fashion we’ve been doing all season.

That’s exactly what we do, but our season ends anyway, all because we do it just a little bit too fast.

We kick the FG to take the lead with 1:32 left on the clock, but this leaves enough time for Detroit to drive down the field again to tie the game at 20, win the OT coin toss, and then do the same thing again. This is before the OT rules allowing both teams to touch the ball, so we lose to the Detroit Lions 23-20, dropping us to 8-6, and (for all intents and purposes) ending our season.

This reminds me a lot of Trent Green’s playoff game in 2003, in that all we can do is look back and say ‘if not for that damned OPI penalty on the completed TD pass.’

If not for that, everything could’ve changed. We would’ve been ahead 21-17 instead of tied at 17, and if that’s the case, perhaps we wouldn’t have settled for the FG on our final offensive touch of the game. Perhaps with a lead to fall back on, we would’ve gotten aggressive, and gone for the jugular.

Instead, we’ve lost, and our season is over now.

As strange as this is to say, generating 0.23 EPA/Play against the NFL’s 12th best defence is actually one of Josh’s worst games since the bye week. Aside from being negative in back to back weeks against Baltimore and Atlanta (two of the best teams in the league), it really doesn’t get worse than this. Since Josh’s thumb fully healed, he has been dominating the league, but everybody takes an off week.

This was not even really an off-week, but he did get slightly outproduced by Drew Stanton’s 0.31 EPA/Play, and when you’re on as thin a razor’s edge as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were sitting on, that’s all it takes to end the season.

At moments like this, the mind drifts back to things that could’ve gone differently. Maybe if we’d let Josh touch the ball in Atlanta. Maybe if we could’ve found those 19 yards at the end of the other Atlanta game. Maybe if the referee had missed the OPI penalty in this game. If we could’ve just won the OT coin toss, and (to be objective) if we could’ve had a combined score better than a 28-7 combined deficit coming out of the first quarter in these three games, I have no doubts we could’ve won at least one of them.

Alas, we didn’t, and with a fourth conference loss, that means our season is basically over now. We’re going to need a dramatic amount of help (two losses from NYG plus a Green Bay loss specifically in week 17) to make the playoffs from this position. Josh does generate 0.51 EPA/Play as we dismantle the Seattle Seahawks (a playoff team) 38-15, and we do get the Giant loss we need in week 16 to technically keep our playoff hopes alive going into week 17, but it’s still essentially hopeless.

To make the final playoff position, we need to defeat the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints, who are fighting for a first round bye in their final game of the year, in their stadium, plus pray for losses out of both New York and Green Bay.

Our game kicks off at one o’clock, because nobody expects it to be competitive, whereas our playoff contending opposition both kick off at four. I suppose this makes sense. We did lose by 25 points the last time we played the Saints, but while the NFL disrespects us with this time slot, it’s actually fantastic for the locker room.

There will be no side glances at television screens. There’ll be no taking it easy in a game already made meaningless by an earlier result. As far as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are concerned, this is a win-and-in playoff game, until the Giants or Packers dictate that to be incorrect, which they do not have the ability to do until after our game is over.

Is there any worse team to be playing in a win-and-in playoff game than the defending Super Bowl champions, who desperately need this win themselves to try to secure a home playoff game? If there is, I’d love to hear any suggestions. Personally, I think we’ve drawn the shortest possible straw. It couldn’t be that the Saints would be resting starters at this point. That wouldn’t be the Buccaneer way. This team needs to do everything in the most difficult fashion possible, or it just wouldn’t be us.

It couldn’t be anything other than what it is, a week 17 game against a New Orleans Saints team that needs this win almost as badly as we need it ourselves. That’s the only way that this particular narrative about the 2010 Buccaneers could possibly end in a fitting fashion.

Think of all the gut checks this team as failed. We got to play against the cream of the AFC (Pittsburgh) without their starting QB, and still lost by 25 points. We got to play the NFC’s number one seed (Atlanta) twice, and while we lost by ten points combined, we still lost both games. When we were finally worked ourselves back into position to secure our playoff spot, we lost at home to Detroit, and the worst of them all, we played New Orleans at home in week six, where we lost by 25 points.

Now, beating the team on the road that we couldn’t even stay competitive with at home is our only way forward. We cannot just keep it close. We have to win. This is one gut check we cannot fail. No beacons of hope. No looking for the positive. A win and only a win is a successful outcome.

The Bucs come out playing like it, actually scoring a FG on our opening drive. That’s the second of just twice all season we score on our opening drive against a team who is not the Carolina Panthers (against whom even we can score in the first quarter). Of course, we immediately fall behind 7-3, which is where the score remains until the end of the first quarter, but this is what we do.

We’ve got them right where we want them.

We score seven in the second quarter to make the score 10-7, and you just cannot let the Tampa Bay Buccaneers enter the second half with the lead.

It’s over.

The two teams trade a little bit, when when we score to move the lead to 20-10 with 17 minutes left to play, there is no catching this Buccaneer team in the fourth quarter when you come into it with a two score deficit. At last, this Saints team is a gut check we pass. The final score reads 23-13, and nobody will ever say that the 2010 Tampa Bay Buccaneers can’t beat good competition.

Both New York and Green Bay winning later in the day will invalidate any playoff meaning this game may have once had, but it has meaning to me. It has meaning to this story, because after all the big stages that these Buccaneers got onto, and failed, including a 25 point loss to this same New Orleans team just ten weeks ago, this one proves that this 2010 Tampa Bay Buccaneer team can beat the good teams.

Not only that. We can also beat the good teams in the big games, as we stole the Saints’ chance at a home playoff game from them, meaning they will have to go on the road as a wild card team now, which is a great deal of the reason why they go one and done in the 2010 playoffs, and we can also beat the good teams by multiple possessions.

As a team whose motto was to play a close game against everybody (playing nine one possession games over the course of the year), proving you can beat a good team by more than seven points is an important thing to do. We had not done it yet, but right under the gun, we got this victory.

Once again, Josh was no bystander. He was leading the charge, generating 0.41 EPA/Play in this virtuoso end of season performance, a game which included a whopping 11 different players targeted for a pass.

That truly is the story of Josh Freeman’s Year.

Following 103 plays of -0.02 EPA/Play football in the first three games while his thumb was ailing, Josh burst onto the scene to generate 0.203 (sixth in the NFL among players with at least 180 plays) over the final 13, carrying his team to their first good offence in the living memory of most of their fans in the process.

This isn’t to say he didn’t do it in unique fashion though.

Over his 581 play sample, Josh finished the season generating -0.07 EPA/Play in the first quarter, and 0.229 EPA/Play on plays that took place outside of the first quarter, a statistical divergence centred entirely into one quarter the likes of which I’ve never even seen anything close to. Generally, good offence in the final three quarters is good offence in the first one too, but over a full season sample, this was not the case for Josh Freeman. This man was awful in the first quarter, but the NFL’s fourth place man in EPA/Play in the final three.

Can you explain that?

I don’t know if I can explain that.

The two Josh Freemans add together to make a 0.181 EPA/Play (7th) QB, and what rational explanation is there for the seventh best EPA/Play QB in the NFL to be so awful in the first quarter? Perhaps one can say the Bucs were really bad at game scripting. That may work as an explanation, but considering this lasted the course of a whole season and never got better, I’m not sure about that, because it’s a virtual certainty that several different philosophies were used to try to combat the first quarter offence problem, which all failed.

Josh’s character became the whole team’s character, as the Buccaneers faced double digit first half deficits in more than half of their games, first half deficits in general in an appalling 11 of them, and an average Win Probability over every play of the season of just 44 percent. For a team that goes on to win ten games, that is extremely low, but yet, I don’t view this as a lucky team. We did only go 5-4 in our nine one possession games, and my expected wins formula puts the 2010 Buccaneers at 9.55, a total for which ten real wins is the most likely outcome.

Every play counts the same. The Buccaneers generated more value than their opponents on a per play basis. For some reason, we just always stacked it into the end of the game. These Buccaneers had a knack for digging ourselves big holes, but generating enough EPA over the final three quarters to dig ourselves out of the hole and then some, winning legit most of the time.

Does this make the QB of this offence great? Or does it merely make him another good timing merchant, similar to 2024 Patrick Mahomes?

That’s a good question, but it’s not quite the same thing. In 2010, Josh Freeman put up stats of 0.181 EPA/Play (7th), 1.8 CPOE (14th), and 6.97 ANY/A (7th), despite almost always playing from behind. To me, although the 14th place ranking in CPOE means this was never going to happen twice, that makes this a great season. Add onto this the lack of any offensive weapon worth mentioning, and it makes it look even better.

I’m not saying that Josh Freeman would be my first overall pick in 2010, but would I draft him top five, to go to a roster with better weapons on it? It’s tough to say. Drafting him means I would have to bring his constant deficits over to my team, and playing from a behind in more than two thirds of all games is not fun, but I also get the electricity that comes from having Josh Freeman on my team for the final three quarters, and it’s not like he didn’t win a lot.

In the 13 games after his thumb healed, Josh Freeman went 8-5, while carrying around the league’s 25th ranked rushing offence, 20th ranked defence, and 53rd best receiver as his number one option. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a winner. It feels as if I’m flip flopping when I discount the credibility of calling somebody like Tom Brady a winner, because he was behind quite often, but then I turn around and do the same thing for Josh Freeman, but this is a special case.

This is a unique season in the annals of NFL history. I’ve looked with great detail at most QB seasons ever played, and this is the only one for which I’m willing to make this concession. Despite being behind for more than half the plays of the season, Josh Freeman is a winner.

It’s a shame we never got to see how the rest of his career would’ve worked out.

After living up to the hype and then some in his second season in 2010, proving himself the franchise QB the team had always wanted, Josh Freeman would never be the same player after this. There are two main reasons. The first is a shoulder injury suffered in the very first game of the 2011 season, which would forever rob his throw accuracy from him. He would never finish a season with a positive CPOE again.

The second is a reported lapse in the mental focus that we discussed all the way in the beginning of the piece. According to reports, Josh would fall into a pattern of partying, not wanting to work hard, and some believe this is the reason why first quarter Josh Freeman would prevail, becoming the player he was for the rest of his career.

Personally, I have a hard time believing that, both because I’m an optimist. I like to see the good in people, and I don’t want to call the subject of one of my piece fat and lazy, and also because I struggle to believe how Josh could let go of everything he showed in the 2010 offseason. People remarked then at just how developed the mental side of his game was. 11000 words ago, I remarked at it as well. I struggle to believe how it could just vanish.

The Florida party scene pulls at people, especially people born with the moxie that Josh Freeman was born with. I understand that, but I don’t believe it could’ve tugged on him strongly enough to take away all of the franchise QB energy that he’d been showing.

I don’t know what the culprit is. Perhaps it’s the shoulder injury. Perhaps it’s something else, but 2010 Josh Freeman never truly came back, and that’s a shame. Josh is only 37 years old as I write this piece. If things had gone differently, he could’ve started the playoff game against Washington just last month. The skill was in there. We saw it. He could just never let it out again.

There would be another ten year wait in Tampa to get the franchise QB they truly wanted, by which point Josh Freeman’s remarkable 2010 carry job would be long forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten, and you shouldn’t forget either, because football seasons that follow this pattern just don’t happen. It may never happen again.

Never forget.

Thanks so much for reading.