Jameis Winston vs Redskins - 21/29, 297 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs

Through Week 6, Jameis Winston’s rookie season has seen ups and downs. After six weeks, he was ranked as Pro Football Focus’ 27^th best quarterback and had thrown an interception on a higher percent of his pass attempts than any other quarterback* (4.61%), but his performance in Week 7 against Washington gave us a glimpse of why he was selected with the number one pick. Headed into Week 7, Washington ranked as Football Outsiders 11^th best defense against the pass and seemed to be a good test for the rookie signal caller.

(Buccaneers: 0 – Washington: 0) 1^st and 10 – 11:55 in the 1^st

• On the third play of their first possession of the game, the Buccaneers find themselves on the Washington 40; relative to other places on the field, teams seem to take a shot down the field at a higher frequency when they are between the 40s.
• Washington defends in in a pseudo Cover 3 “Could” look (not exactly what they do, but it’s a similar principle). In this case, the underneath defenders look to disrupt the release of the #2 receiver to the open side of the formation and the #1 receiver to the closed side of the formation (#1 to the closed side stays in to pass protect); after they look to disrupt, they fall to cover the flats.
• The route combination and protection scheme on this play is a clear indication that the Buccaneers consciously decided to take a shot deep pre snap. Brandon Myers and Luke Stocker stay in post snap to provide extra assistance in pass protection, while Vincent Jackson runs a post from the slot to occupy the middle third defender, and Mike Evans runs a go route designed to stem to the outside of the outer third defender. Enough can’t be said about the throw made by Winston on this play; if you play close enough attention, you can see that Winston first decides to go to Evans when he initially stems to the outside at the 33 yard line; the goal seems to be for Evans and Winston to meet at the pylon on this play.

(Buccaneers: 10 – Washington: 0) 3^rd and 1 – 11:41 in the 2^nd

• Winston’s second touchdown pass of the day comes in a situation where he makes a read on the defense, audiles, and executes successfully on the throw.
• Easy read to make: Washington is in Cover 1, which is a defense commonly used on short yardage downs. My guess is that the Buccaneers came out of the huddle with a run play called and Winston audibled to the pass play.
• The perfect audible was called; Washington is lined up in press man pre snap, the Buccaneers run a pick play to the top of the screen, and Winston makes a nice throw off the back shoulder of the receiver—Donteea Dye. It’s always curious to me why defenses don’t play in-and-out more in obvious pick play situations.

(Buccaneers: 24 – Washington: 21) 3^rd and 5 – 6:06 in the 3^rd

• Again on third down, Washington falls back in Cover 1, but this time the outside defensive backs jam the #1 wide receivers to each side of the formation to allow the blitz extra time to get to the quarterback and throw off the timing of the play.
• The Buccaneers run a pick play underneath with two drive routes and add a curl over the top. Mike Evans runs a fade route and is left alone in single man coverage with the free safety secluded far enough away to be of little help.
• Like the first touchdown that we analyzed, Winston anticipates exactly where Mike Evans will be long before he reaches his destination, this time placing it on Evans’ outside shoulder.

(Buccaneers: 30 – Washington: 31) 1^st and 10 – 0:24 in the 4^th

• With 24 seconds left in the game, the Buccaneers launch their last ditch effort to mount a comeback.
• The Redskins fall back into Cover 2, but the Buccaneers have Flat-7 (a classic cover two beater) route combinations dialed up to both sides of the formation. The premise of the Flat-7 combination is to draw the cornerback into the flat with an underneath route and open up the whole for a corner route underneath the safety in the soft spot of the zone.
• This is awful coverage by Quinton Dunbar; he falls for the bait sent underneath instead of covering the corner route, which is his job. As Matt Bowen notes, the cornerback needs to prioritize the 7 route and only peruse the flat route once the corner route has been eliminated (especially with 24 seconds left in the game).

Winston was helped by the fact that Washington was only able to generate pressure on 32% of his dropbacks (seventh worst for the week**). However, he was hurt by play action; Winston’s completion percentage was 48.2% higher when play action was not used. While the differential hasn’t been as pronounced over the course of the season, Winston does have the sixth highest completion percentage differential between play action drop backs and non play action dropbacks of all quarterbacks in 2015**. It will be interesting to see if this trend persists, but Winston showed on Sunday that he’s able to make the correct read and execute on passes with precision in key situations.

* Highest of all QBs with 25% or more of their teams snaps

** Of all QBs that took 25% or more of their team’s snaps. Provided by Pro Football Focus.