Punchless Bucs lose to Packers, 20-3 Roy Cummings, The Tampa Tribune, published 22 December 2014 For 16 weeks now, the Buccaneers have been more or less winging it on offense. That’s what you do when you don’t have an offensive coordinator. You all but make it up as you go along, everybody pitching in with ideas, patching it together week by week, bailing wire and chewing gum. The problem with that approach, of course, is sooner or later your offense is bound to fall apart, which is precisely what happened on Sunday afternoon at Raymond James Stadium. “There was just nothing there,’’ a dejected Josh McCown said after the quarterback orchestrated the Bucs’ worst offensive performance of the season during a 20-3 loss to the Packers. McCown wasn’t exaggerating. Through the first 24 minutes of the game — during which time the Bucs went three-plays-and-out on each of their first five possessions — the Bucs gained a net total of zero yards. The problem was, they never really got much better. By the time the game ended, the Bucs (2-13) had a net total of just 109 yards, by far their worst offensive output of the season. That included a season-low net rushing total of 16 yards and a season-low net passing total of 93 yards. “It’s hard to win games when you put up that kind of offensive production,’’ Lovie Smith said. And it wasn’t like they took on the Monsters of the Midway or the Old Steel Curtain. The Packers (11-4) came to town sporting the league’s 23rd-ranked defense, allowing rather robust averages of 365.7 yards and 23.2 points per game. The Bucs, though, could barely dent them. Their only successful possession came at the end of the first half, when they used a couple of long passes to fuel a 76-yard drive that resulted in their only score, a 43-yard Patrick Murray field goal. “It’s a combination of things,’’ Smith said of the problems plaguing a unit that entered the game ranked 30th overall in the 32-team league in total offense (305.9 ypg). “You start up front first, and we’re not playing good enough football up front. It’s tough when you have less than 20 yards rushing. “And of course when you pass, you can’t really protect. Quarterback-wise, there were some decisions we would like to have back, getting rid of the ball a little bit quicker. It’s just a combination of all those things right now. So, to try to pin-point it or blame it all on one particular area, that wouldn’t be right.” McCown agreed. While he certainly wasn’t blaming the season-long offensive woes completely on the absence of a coordinator, he would not deny that has factored into the struggles. “There’s a reason why 31 other teams have an offensive coordinator,” McCown said. McCown has been running an offense without a coordinator since the fourth week of the preseason. That’s when Jeff Teford, whom Smith hired in January, left his post to have a heart procedure. A month later, citing fatigue, the 56-year-old Tedford asked for and received an indefinite leave of absence. Finally, two weeks ago, Tedford and the Bucs agreed to part ways, setting the stage for Tedford’s hiring on Friday as the new head coach of the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League. During his introductory news conference, Tedford suggested he felt well enough to return to coaching in October, saying he has been physically “good to go for a couple of months now.’’ “I don’t know all the ins and outs of everything that’s gone on with him,’’ McCown said of Tedford on Sunday. “All I know is he wasn’t here. That’s all I can go off of. He wasn’t here. And if you say (a coordinator) doesn’t matter, well, then people would just say, ‘Let’s wing it and go without a coordinator.’ So, it does matter. It does make a difference.’’ It certainly seemed to make a difference Sunday, when the Bucs, despite their offensive misgivings, managed to stay with the Packers for the better part of four quarters. They did that, of course, by limiting one of the league’s most potent attacks to one touchdown and a pair of field goals through the first 55 minutes. That included a defensive stand on their goal line in which the Bucs denied the Packers the one yard they needed to score a touchdown on three consecutive plays. “It just goes to prove that you need more than just an OK defensive day (to win in this league),’’ Smith said. “But defensively, when it’s a day like that, you have to do something to jump start the offense. You need a few more takeaways. You need something (from) the special teams. When one part is that bad, you need others to really step up their games even more.’’ Or you could get a coordinator.