Leftwich Has His Work Cut Out For Him.

Byron Leftwich has a big task at hand in fixing the Buccaneers running game. 2018 was a rough year for the run game, there was not enough consistency from the running backs for anyone in the NFL to respect it. A lack of a high producing run game made it easy for defensive coordinators game plan for the Buccaneers offense.

The Buccaneers finished near the bottom of the NFL in pretty much every rushing category, so Leftwich and company has their work cut out for them.

The biggest area Leftwich will need to address is the Buccaneers Red Zone woes, which literally lost the Buccaneers a hand full of games due to not being able to get into the Endzone. Consistently coming away with no points due to a combination of bad offensive line play and poor play calling Caused the Buccaneers to miss out on a lot of Red Zone points.

Tanner Hudson and Donnie Ernsberger will be competing for a tight end spot behind O.J. Howard and Cameron Brate and in this battle, Ernsberger gets the edge as he appeared in two games in 2018 and did well when he was on the field. Both, Hudson and Ernsberger, are pretty evenly matched, so this will make for an interesting training camp and preseason. Both have shown they can produce solid blocks on the run and need to be developed as blockers in order to utilize them in the running scheme. If the Buccaneers cannot develop these guys into filling in as run blockers, then Tampa will need to find others who can take on that responsibility. The Buccaneers need more than one tight end who can block on both, passing and rushing schemes, and have the ability to break out into a passing route causing mismatches.