Bucs' defense falls short in loss to Lions Roy Cummings, The Tampa Tribune, published 20 December 2010 Even as the personnel losses continued to pile up on that side of the ball the past few weeks, Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris never lost faith in his defense. Perhaps he should have. On Sunday, Morris put a critical game against the Lions on the shoulders of a defensive unit that has lost six starters to injury or suspension since the start of the season, and it cost him. Not once, but twice. Just minutes after surrendering a game-tying, 58-yard field goal drive, the Bucs allowed the Lions to drive 63 yards for the winning 34-yard field goal in a devastating 23-20 overtime loss at Raymond James Stadium. "If you want to play championship football, you've got to be able to stand up and play at a championship caliber at times, and we weren't able to do that on defense, especially at the end of the game,'' Morris said. "We ended up losing a game that we could have won, a game that we had in our grasp. We let it slip away in the fourth quarter there, which is really kind of unlike us.'' It hasn't been unlike them lately. The Bucs allowed the Redskins to rally and nearly tie the game in Washington a week ago and the Falcons to come back from 10 points down to win in the fourth quarter two weeks ago. Those fourth-quarter rallies came amid the loss of four defensive starters — tackle Gerald McCoy, linebacker Quincy Black, cornerback Aqib Talib and safety Cody Grimm — to season-ending injuries, but no one inside the Bucs' locker room was willing to blame that for the late-game defensive lapses. "You can write that if you want, but guys have to step up,'' cornerback Ronde Barber said. "It doesn't matter that (Talib) isn't here or that Cody Grimm and all those other guys aren't here. "We have to play better two-minute defense. We haven't stopped the run in two-minute (situations) in three weeks. You've got to find ways to make plays there. This is our playoff run and we lost to a team (Sunday) we should have beat.'' So did the Giants. That's the good news. After taking a 31-10 fourth-quarter lead, the Giants lost 38-31 to the Eagles, whose victory left New York (9-5) just one game ahead of Tampa Bay (8-6) in the battle for the NFC's final playoff berth. Morris admitted the loss was not the "death blow'' it could have been. It was clearly a "gut punch,'' however, and that it could have been prevented immediately began to eat away at several players. "This and the two losses to Atlanta, we'll look back at the end of the year if we don't get (to the playoffs) and kick ourselves for them,'' said Barber, who was as unhappy with the Bucs' defense of receiver Calvin Johnson as their two-minute rush defense. Though they kept him out of end zone, the Bucs allowed Johnson to catch 10 passes for 152 yards, including a critical 23-yard catch during the game-tying drive and a 12-yard catch on third-and-8 during the winning drive. "It was a bad plan, and we didn't execute it even when it was a good plan,'' said Barber, whose sentiments were shared by middle linebacker Barrett Ruud. "I don't know what it was, but it wasn't very good,'' Ruud said of the plan to stop Johnson, who eclipsed the 1,000-yard barrier for the third straight season. "I think if we could re-do it we probably would.'' Morris said the plan to slow Johnson called for the cornerbacks to play an "aggressive man-to-man'' coverage at the line of scrimmage and for a safety to back up the corner by patrolling the deep area behind him. Johnson beat that, though, by using his size — 6-foot-5, 236 pounds — and strength to out-power defenders for position and out-leap them for balls thrown such that only Johnson could get them. "Give him credit,'' Barber said of Johnson. "He's a special player and we had guys leaning in to him all day. But he just made some unbelievable catches. He just dominated us the whole second half. Shoot, he dominated us the whole first half.'' The Bucs were dominated by the Lions' running game, too. A unit that had been averaging fewer than 100 yards per game, Detroit ran 28 times for 181 yards against the Bucs, a 6.5-yards-per-carry average. A good chunk of those yards, 49 to be exact, came during the Lions' lone overtime possession, which was punctuated by a 26-yard run by Maurice Morris and a 14-yard run by rookie Jahvid Best to start the series. Morris said the game's outcome turned on those two runs, but admitted that, after sleeping on it, he may agree the game actually turned on his decision to leave it to the defense to win it. He did have another option, after all, but instead of having quarterback Josh Freeman take a shot at the end zone and go for a touchdown on the Bucs last possession, he settled for a field goal. "Every game is different, and in some games you definitely would let Freeman win it there,'' Morris said. "But — and this is not a knock on Freeman — this was something that we needed to stand up and do. We have the ability to do it, and I can second-guess myself (today) when I go back and look at it for not trying to win it with Free, but I wanted to win it on defense.''