TAMPA, Fla. -- Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Dirk Koetter took the podium Friday in his day-after-game news conference, and when reporters asked him, "How are you doing?" he responded with his usual dry sense of humor and a smirk. "Well, I'm not undefeated!" The room laughed. The Bucs lost 17-9 in Thursday night's preseason opener in Philadelphia. The two main culprits were turnovers and disastrous play on special teams -- the type of self-defeating mistakes that young, inexperienced teams make.
"Before you start winning games, you’ve got to stop losing them. And in two of the three phases last night, we beat ourselves," Koetter said. "And that’s taking nothing away from Philly. They did what they did. I’m coaching this team, not that team. Defensively, [we] played good enough to win. [The] other two phases, we beat ourselves.
"It starts off with turnovers -- five turnovers, four on offense, one on special teams -- and penalties and lack of execution, lack of precision and detail more than anything else on offense. And I know we have it in us because I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it in practice. We had a little flash of it in that third drive, but that’s pretty much it.”
The Bucs were aided by the use of no-huddle on the third drive, which ended in a 26-yard touchdown catch by Russell Shepard, whom Koetter said stood out, along with Donteea Dye. He also pointed out that aside from Kenny Bell's fumble on the opening kickoff, he had a solid night but simply didn't get any targets or was the intended receiver on a poor throw by the quarterback.
"On the very last drive, he ran a little double-move and was open, we overthrew him," Koetter said, noting that Bell beat his man multiple times. "There’s probably five plays in the game where Kenny did his job and got open. Sometimes he’s not the primary, but he did all he can do, he just didn’t get the ball thrown to him."
The defense was the bright spot of the night, generating four sacks, 10 quarterback hits and five tackles for loss. Rookie middle linebacker Luke Rhodes had a forced fumble and safety Isaiah Johnson picked off Carson Wentz. The Bucs' defense held the Eagles to 188 yards of total offense and surrendered 17 points.
"When you look at our defensive goal chart, our defensive drive chart, our defense nailed it," Koetter said. "Under 200 yards and 17 points, you’re going to win most of those games. We were just so poor on turnovers on the other side of the ball and put them in such horrendous field position that we put our defense in. But you look at the drive chart on the game and you’d take that every week.”
Koetter also addressed the kicking situation, which was perhaps the most shocking of all. Roberto Aguayo, the highest-drafted kicker since 2005 and the most accurate in college football history, who made 198 of 198 extra-point attempts in college, missed his first PAT on Thursday night. He would later make a 38-yard field goal.
Did the pressure of being a second-round draft pick get to him?
“I think this guy’s a tough-minded guy. I think he’s showed up well in practice every day, that’s what you go by," Koetter said. "He’s played in big games, in big stadiums before. I don’t know if he was nervous or not. He missed it, and I didn’t think he kicked off particularly well either. It was a little windier on the field than maybe it appeared, but I’m still glad he’s our kicker.”
Koetter acknowledged that because of Aguayo's draft position and college record, there'd be a "huge outcry" when he did miss the first kick, which was true -- it set off a social media firestorm. But he provided an alternate theory as to why it happened, joking, "He actually missed that on purpose so we could just get it over with."