The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a problem as they went into their locker room at halftime of Sunday's regular season finale against New Orleans. Needing a win (or an Atlanta loss) to secure their fourth straight division title, the Buccaneers were trailing the Saints, who came into the game as nearly two-touchdown underdogs, by 10. They had been having trouble slowing a New Orleans offense that was without quarterback Derek Carr, running back Alvin Kamara, tight end Taysom Hill and wide receivers Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed.
The Saints had 231 yards of offense at the break and had already scored more points than they had in their previous two games combined. The Buccaneers couldn't know at this point that the Falcons were going to go on to lose in overtime to Carolina, so they believed they had to erase that 16-6 deficit in order to keep their season moving forward.
The offense woke up in the second half, driving 72 yards for a touchdown on the first drive of the third quarter and adding marches of 82 and 94 yards in the fourth quarter. That proved to be enough to come away with a 27-19 win, but only because the Tampa Bay defense continued an unusual and rather impressive trend.
The Saints only points in the second half were on a 49-yard Blake Grupe field goal. That marked the fifth straight game in which the Buccaneers have held their opponent to three points or fewer in the second half. Two of those outings – at the Chargers in Week 15 and against Carolina in Week 17 – included second-half shutouts leading to blowout wins. In the other three – Sunday's game plus a win at home against the Raiders in Week 14 and a loss at Dallas in Week 16 – their opponents managed a single field goal after the break.
As much as sideline reporters want to question coaches about "halftime adjustments," there usually isn't some magic answer in the locker room. Halftimes in the NFL are only 13 minutes long, and that includes the walks to the locker room and back.
"There's not a whole lot of adjustments," said Head Coach Todd Bowles. "I mean, there are things we talk about. We just play more aggressive in the second half once they see things. I don't know why that is. We keep trying to start out that way and we talk about it. We know that's happening, we know what's going to happen and [there's] a lot of different parts with the different guys playing but we just have to play that way for four quarters. They're capable of it."
No other team in the NFL has been as defensively dominant as the Buccaneers down the stretch. The only other team to hold their opponents to fewer than 30 points in second halves in the same span is Baltimore, with 21, and the Ravens only played four games in those five weeks. The lowest total allowed by any team to play in all five of the last five weeks is 40, by Seattle and Arizona. The average number of points allowed by teams in the second halves of games over the last five weeks of the season was 55.3.
Some of it is as simple as doing a better job of getting off the field on third downs. During that five game stretch, the Buccaneers have allowed conversions on 37.0% of their opponents' third-down tries in the first half. In the second half, that success rate plummets to 13.8%, and in three of the last five games the Bucs' foes have failed to convert a single third down after halftime. That is a massive swing from the first two thirds of the season. Prior to Week 14, Buccaneer opponents converted 45.8% of their third downs after halftime.
Bowles believes much of the in-game improvement is the result of recognizing what they are doing wrong and correcting it as quickly as possible. On Sunday, the main issue was a series of missed tackles in the first half. The Saints weren't pressing the ball downfield much with rookie quarterback Spencer Rattler, but Rattler's short passes were turning into longer gains than they should.
"We missed quite a few tackles at the start of the game," said Bowles. "Even in the middle of the game, some of the small plays that should've went for minimum yardage...we started wrapping up, we kept our head up in the second half and kind of calmed down and played a normal game."
The Buccaneers' first and second half splits in terms of points allowed have been anything but normal this season. In the second halves of games, the Bucs rank second in the NFL, allowing just 8.6 points per game. In the first halves of games, Tampa Bay's scoring defense ranks third to last, giving up 14.0 points per outing. Bowles would like to see his defense put together the type of work it has displayed in the second halves in recent weeks for an entire 60-minute game, but at least the team knows it has a chance to rally if the first half doesn't go exactly as hoped.
