Bucs' discouraging 24-17 loss to Saints all but ends playoff hopes Roy Cummings, The Tampa Tribune, published 14 December 2015 Well, it was fun while it lasted. All that talk of racing for the playoffs, of being in the postseason mix, of being relevant again. It was real and it was exciting, a welcome departure from what had become the norm for the Buccaneers this time of year. It will fade now, just as the Bucs’ always-slim playoff hopes have faded, virtually to black. Remember, it was the Bucs who said a couple of weeks ago they probably had to win all their remaining games to keep playing beyond the regular season. It won’t happen now, not after losing 24-17 to the Saints in front of a near-capacity crowd of 62,138 at Raymond James Stadium. Talk about having your backs against a wall. With Seattle winning convincingly over Baltimore on Sunday, the Bucs (6-7) are now two games behind the Seahawks (8-5) in the race for the NFC’s final wild-card berth with only three games to play. And the next game is Thursday at St. Louis. “Lights are on and everybody’s watching,’’ defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said of the only prime-time game the Bucs were originally scheduled to play this year. “What are you going to do about it?’’ There’s really no way of knowing. As McCoy aptly pointed out in the locker room after Sunday’s game, if the Bucs have been anything this year, they have been inconsistent. Respectable one week, reprehensible the next. They were the latter against the Saints. On McCoy’s side of the ball, the Bucs allowed quarterback Drew Brees to complete 31 of 41 passes for 312 yards, New Orleans to convert 12 of 17 third downs (71 percent) and the Saints to stay on the field for the final 4:13 of the game. Over on quarterback Jameis Winston’s side of the ball, the Bucs were simply disjointed. The first snap from scrimmage set the tone for the afternoon, a holding penalty against rookie left tackle Donovan Smith wiping out a 36-yard pass to Vincent Jackson. Tampa Bay’s offense mustered just 291 yards against the Saints, who entered the game with the NFL’s worst defense in allowing an average of 425.2 yards and 31.7 points per game. “We kind of knew what was at stake today,’’ Lovie Smith said. “And usually you play your best ball when this much is on the line. But the things we did today, you just can’t win football games doing some of that. The things that cause you to lose games, we did it all today.’’ The long list of iniquities included Connor Barth missing wide left on 47-yard field goal attempt with six minutes left in the third quarter and the Bucs trailing 17-10. After starting their subsequent drive from their 37-yard line, the Saints scored a touchdown that increased their lead to 24-10. They did so, though, with help from the Bucs. On third-and-15 with 5:13 left in the third quarter, defensive end Kourtnei Brown broke through for a sack of Brees, but end Howard Jones was penalized for illegal use of the hands, wiping out the sack and giving the Saints a first down. A horse-collar penalty against safety Chris Conte at the end of the 20-yard reception by Brandon Coleman ate up another chunk of yardage. Five plays later, the Saints scored what proved to be the winning touchdown on a 3-yard run. Tampa Bay increased its league-leading penalty total to 125 in committing eight for 80 yards on Sunday. Dropped balls were also a problem for the Bucs. The biggest came early in the fourth quarter, after Tampa Bay had cut the Saints lead to 24-17 on a 6-yard pass to receiver Adam Humphries. On third-and-10 from the Tampa Bay 44-yard line, receiver Donteea Dye, in the game for injured Vincent Jackson (knee), broke two steps free of his defender on a post route, but failed to hold onto a strike from Winston more than 15 yards downfield. Winston completed just 18 of 32 passes for 182 yards — his second-lowest output of the season after throwing for 177 in an overtime win at Atlanta in November — and struggled with his accuracy, sailing several balls out of the reach of his targets. “Third downs, dropped balls, overthrown balls, a missed field goal, we just didn’t put a good product on the field today,’’ Smith said. “No one played well today. I wish I could stand up here and tell you someone played well, but just being real, no one did well.’’ Despite all their mistakes, the Bucs still had a chance to win late, trailing by only seven points through the final nine minutes. Smith found that remarkable, but given the situation the team is in after the loss, didn’t find much solace in it. “If we had just done a few more things,’’ Smith said. “Offensively, if we had just made a few more plays. Or defensively, if we had just gotten a couple of stops, or at least one stop. But we just weren’t making plays today. We didn’t play well and they played better than us. And when you play like we did, you want to get back on the field as soon as possible, and we get our wish. Quick turnaround, Thursday night game. We need to win a game.’’ In the worst way.