Tom Brady, Buccaneers offensive woes: Breaking down what’s wrong as Chiefs loom in Week 4 primetime matchup

Through three weeks, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in an offensive funk. Sure, they have played against three strong defenses in the Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, and Green Bay Packers. But strength of opponent does not fully explain the Bucs ranking 27th in yards, 22nd in points, and 20th in drive success rate despite the seventh-best average starting field position in football. It doesn’t explain Tampa checking in 28th in yards per play, 31st in points per drive, and 31st in EPA per play. 

The biggest factor in that under-performance so far is undoubtedly injuries and other player absences. 

Tampa’s two starting guards from last season — Ali Marpet and Alex Cappa — are no longer with the team after Marpet retired and Cappa left in free agency. One of the two replacements — Shaq Mason, acquired in a trade from the Patriots — has been on the field for every snap this season. But the other — Aaron Stinnie — tore his ACL during training camp and has been replaced in the lineup by rookie Luke Goedeke. Stalwart center Ryan Jensen suffered a serious knee injury of his own, and has been replaced in the lineup by 2021 third-round pick Robert Hainsey. Left tackle Donovan Smith left Week 1 with an elbow injury and has not played since. His replacement, Josh Wells, suffered an injury as well. 

So, a year after Smith, Marpet, Jensen, Cappa, and Tristan Wirfs played 94.9% of all available snaps along the offensive line, Tampa’s preferred starters (Smith, Stinnie, Jensen, Mason, and Wirfs) have played just 42.3% of the snaps. Amazingly, all the offensive line shuffling has not yet resulted in a dramatic increase in the amount of pressure on Tom Brady — largely because Brady is somehow getting the ball out of his hands even faster than he was a year ago. His average throw has come 2.27 seconds after the snap, according to Tru Media, the fastest mark in the league, and 0.11 seconds faster than his second-ranked time from last season. (For context, the league average is 2.71 seconds.) That’s how Brady’s pressure rate is almost exactly equal to his mark from last year. What’s changed, though, is that when defenses have manage to get pressure, they have gotten Brady to the ground far more often. 

Surely, some of that is due to the injury issues at wide receiver, and the resulting trouble the remaining players are having getting…