Breakdown of the Bucs’ WR’s

Chris Godwin 

Godwin’s role in the Bucs’ offense is very similar to Cooper Kupps’ in the Rams offense. Godwin primarily aligns tight to the formation on base downs so that he can get involved in run blocking, particularly on duo. Arians also uses him as the blocker on their windback duo play, just like McVay does with Kupp often (the Rams ran windback duo 41 https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0ZGWxe86Ht0Vs times in 2020-)

This means that Godwin doesn’t targeted much when the Bucs are in their base offense. However, Arians has made an effort all season to get Godwin involved on downfield routes early in his opening script. 

Most of Godwin’s targets in passing situations come on underneath routes and he is their go to ‘possession receiver’, which is again just like Kupp. The concept that he gets targeted most on is called ‘tier’. 

Mike Evans

Evans is the Bucs’ primary outside receiver and is one of the best ‘X’ receivers in the NFL. 

Evans is 6”4 and is very physical at the top of routes, while still having the long speed to win deep down the field. He is primarily targeted on either deep curls or go routes- he leads the NFL in go route targets and receptions over the last three seasons. Despite this, he has struggled at times against physical press corners such as Marshon Latttimore. Spagnuolo likely recognised this, so he was comfortable leaving his corners isolated on him for almost every play of the first matchup. I know very little about WR play, but it seems to me that his lack of quickness is why he can struggle to get off the line cleanly. 

A way Arians can mitigate this is to put Evans in the slot more often to give him a cleaner release and more space to work with outside. This is what he did a few times against the Packers in the NFC championship game. 

If Spagnuolo is going to implement a similar gameplan as the first time around, Evans will need to win more often. Whether he can do this or not will be critical to his success. 

Scotty Miller

Miller is one of the best WR’s in the NFL against off coverage because of his acceleration and long speed. This has allowed him to win over the top three times this season against bail CB’s, which is not an easy thing to do as their No.1 job is to not get beat over the top. 

He has also had lots of success running hitches, stops, speed outs, and deep outs vs off as CB’s have to respect his speed. 

In order to give Miller opportunities to utilise his deep threat ability, Arians will need to use stacks and bunches to get Miller free releases. This will be critical against the Chiefs as they disregarded the Bucs ability to attack them deep in the first game, and as Miller has shown, he can win deep even when the defense is trying to take away deep throws. 

This a play that I would definitely have in my gameplan to attack all the space the Chiefs give offenses to the outside and deep. 

Miller is only an alert on the play above, so there are other options for Brady if Miller doesn’t get a free release. 

The following play is another thing I would do in passing situations when the Chiefs get into one of their no-deep coverages (cover 0, bracket), and even when they do play single high man coverages the post safety usually plays aggressively, so will probably jump on the intermediate route. 

Spagnuolo won’t give him a free release like the Vikings did, so Arians would have to manufacture a free release. 

Another good way to attack the Chiefs’ aggresive secondary would be to have Miller run an out and up. 

Expect Arians to have learned from his mistakes in the first matchup and have a few plays designed for Miller to burn the Chiefs deep.