Last night, Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were shut out 9-0 by the New Orleans Saints on Sunday Night Football. It wasn’t just an embarrassing showing for Brady, who committed two turnovers on third-down, but a bad night for the team with injuries. Chris Godwin and Mike Evans were both ruled out by the beginning of the second half.
Injuries to the Bucs’ two best receivers left Brady to rely heavily on tight end Rob Gronkowski, but they were out of sync all night connecting on just two of 11 targets for 29 yards.
“It was big,” coach Bruce Arians said of the injuries. “The young guys, I was hoping they’d step up a little bit more – the receivers. Overall, we just dropped too many balls.”
The team also lost running back Leonard Fournette and linebacker Lavonte David to injuries.
“It hurts more losing all the players we lost,” Arians said. “We lost about seven starters in this game, so I’m more concerned about that right now.”
With three games remaining in the regular season, and if Godwin and Evans aren’t able to return, the team will need some reinforcements. The Bucs will get back veteran receivers Breshad Perriman who had been placed on the reserve/COVID list earlier in the week and Antonio Brownwho was serving a three-game suspension for lying to the league about COVID-19 vaccination status.
The team, who going into last night’s game averaged a league-high 31.54 points per game, looks to return to form next Sunday where they’ll look to hold off the Dallas Cowboys for the top seed in the NFC as they take on the Carolina Panthers at 1 p.m.
