That made for a positive first game as a head coach for Dirk Koetter, and some redemption for Bucs defensive coordinator Mike Smith, the former Falcons head coach. Winston delivered a dime to the tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, who made the excellent grab over Sean Weatherspoon. “Let’s do it 15 more times this year”.
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The ex-Falcons coach is excited about the trip, though not because he’s facing his old team for the first time since being fired two seasons ago.
Ancient Rome anyone? Seriously though, Winston, Evans, and Martin could take this game over if the Falcons aren’t careful.
“It’s not often that you have young guys like him with that kind of poise at such an important position with all the eyes on him”, Hawley said.
Jameis Winston: 23/33, 281 yards, 4 TDs, INT.
On his first National Football League field-goal attempt, Roberto Aguayo drilled a 43-yard field goal to give the Bucs a 3-0 lead with 9:57 left in the first quarter. The other one just happened to be another Jameis Winston special, as he directed TD drives of 75, 85, 80 and 80 in a 45-17 win at Philadelphia a year ago on November 22 (he threw in a ho-hum 59-yard TD drive in that game for good measure). However, the Falcons had to settle for a field goal in the red zone. While Jones will be a handful for Tampa Bay to slow in the secondary, McCoy will wreak havoc on an average Atlanta offensive line and cause Ryan to have happy feet in the pocket.
The Buccaneers scored on their first two possessions of the second half, pushing the lead to 31-13.
Yep, DeBerg set the bar rather high on opening day in 1987, throwing five touchdown passes and no interceptions in a 48-10 thrashing of the Falcons. Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with a retractable roof, opens next door next season. Both teams missed out on the playoffs a year ago, and are looking to take a step in the right direction in their division on Sundays. Matt Ryan finally found his superstar receiver for a 25-yard touchdown and the two-point conversion to Mohamed Sanu was successful, making it 31-21. Otherwise, this season is going to be long and tough, especially for Matt Ryan and the rest of the Atlanta Falcons offense. The Bucs have a pretty stout front seven and if they can shake Ryan there could be trouble.
Winston now has two career games with at least four touchdown passes in his first 17, tied for the second-most in team history with Steve DeBerg and Doug Williams behind only Brad Johnson (four). For the sake of the list below, however, we’ve added a minimum of 10 games played.
NO SACKS: The Falcons may be exhausted of hearing they ranked last in the league with 19 sacks last season and have ranked no higher than 28th since 2012.
They lost five of their last six that year, and haven’t been above.500 until now.
Bucs reserve DE Jacquies Smith injured a knee early in the game and didn’t return. Jones’ status for the opener was never really in doubt, even when he was held out of last week’s final preseason game with an ankle injury and was limited in Wednesday’s practice.
Some big penalties cost the home team in the third quarter.
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It seemed as though the visitors were aiming to get into field goal range before the end of the half, but a dump off by Winston to Charles Sims saw the running back break tackles left and right to rumble in for the score with 14 seconds left. That’s part of the game.
