TAMPA ― Something was different about the Bucs running game.
In Saturday night’s 17-14 preseason win over Cincinnati, what was the league’s worst rushing attack the past two seasons came to life.
Instead of tiptoeing through the hole, rookie Bucky Irving and second-year pro Sean Tucker crashed into the Bengals defensive line like well-hurled bowling balls.
“I think the biggest thing is they’re getting downhill,” head coach Todd Bowles said after the Bucs rushed for 136 yards and two touchdowns on 32 carries, a 4.3-yard average. “Nobody is dancing back there like they were in the past.
“They understand where the holes are a little better, and they’ve gotten a year to mature — at least Sean does; Bucky is a natural runner like that. They’re recognizing the holes, and they’re doing a good job in practice of seeing where it has to be and they’re exploding through it.”
Third-year running back Rachaad White was among the 25 players ― most of them starters ― who did not play in the game.
But he watched as rookie center Graham Barton, the Bucs’ first-round pick, paved the way for Irving’s 5-yard touchdown run to cap a 77-yard drive and tie the game 7-7 in the first quarter.
Tucker led the Bucs with 68 yards on 10 carries, including a 26-yard run, the longest in the game.
Rookie undrafted free agent Ramon Jefferson, who played for new offensive coordinator Liam Coen at Kentucky, scored the winning touchdown on a 3-yard run with 57 seconds remaining in the game.
Coen’s biggest task is to restore the Bucs’ rushing attack. For the first preseason game, anyway, it looked totally different.
“It’s awesome,” said quarterback Kyle Trask. “When you can get the run game going like that, that’s all you can ask for. It opens up the entire offense. That’s all just assignment and communication, going to the right ID points, getting all the right checks in, and I thought we did a great job of that all night.”
Irving, a fourth-round pick from Oregon, demonstrated the vision, power and agility that enticed the Bucs to select him. He also did a good job in pass protection. You could certainly imagine him splitting reps this season with White, who had 1,539 total yards from scrimmage and an astounding 336 touches in 2023.
“He had no jitters,” Bowles said of Irving. “He wasn’t nervous. He hit the holes well, he caught the ball well, he passed the block well. I’ll check the tape for everything else, but I thought he had a good first outing.”
Bowles said he hasn’t finished evaluating Barton and returning center Robert Hainsey, who started the game with guards Cody Mauch and Ben Bredeson.
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Explore all your options“I’m still in the process of looking at that, but I saw some good things,” Bowles said. “There was a snap on the ground — I’ve got to finish looking at the tape — but from a run-game standpoint, I thought they did a decent job of getting up to the second level.”
Also undetermined is the battle for the No. 2 quarterback spot behind Baker Mayfield.
Both Trask and John Wolford played efficiently, leading the offense to touchdowns.
Trask finished 12 of 20 for 144 yards passing. But he was intercepted once and failed to get much velocity on a couple of other passes that fell incomplete.
After going three-and-out on the Bucs’ first drive, Trask completed passes of 24 yards to Ryan Miller, 19 to third-round pick Jalen McMillan and 21 to Trey Palmer to set up the first touchdown.
Wolford finished 12-of-18 passing for 131 yards and orchestrated the game-winning drive.
“It’s only one game,” Bowles said. “They’ve got two more games to see how this plays out. They both made some good plays, they’d both like to have some plays back, obviously. Kyle threw it soft a couple of times, and he’s got to let it go. John made some good throws underneath when he was under pressure, but it’s still a competition. There are still two games to go. It’s still close.”
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