The Tampa Bay Buccaneers put behind them the 48-3 disaster they suffered a week ago against the San Francisco 49ers, and now have sole possession of first place in the NFC South.<\/p>\n
Although the Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints have identical 4-2 records, the Bucs have a half-game lead after their thrilling 26-20 win Sunday at Raymond James Stadium.<\/p>\n
Josh Freeman (pictured)<\/strong> threw for 303 yards and two touchdowns, and Earnest Graham<\/strong>, subbing for the injured LeGarertt Blount<\/strong> rushed for 109 yards.<\/p>\n The Buc defense picked off Saints quarterback Drew Brees<\/strong> three times, and Tanard Jackson<\/strong> made sure everyone knew he was back with a 16-yard interception return.<\/p>\n The Bucs drew first blood when Da\u2019Quan Bowers<\/strong> recovered a fumble that led to a Connor Barth<\/strong> 48-yard field goal. The Saints answered with Brees<\/strong> tossing a 38-yard touchdown strike to Marques Colston<\/strong> putting them up 7-3.<\/p>\n In the second quarter, Freeman<\/strong> unleashed a 65-yard strike to Arrelious Benn<\/strong> for a touchdown and the Bucs took the lead back, 10-7. In the fourth quarter, the Saints went for a 4th and 2 with 3:16 left in the game. That play blew up when Brees<\/strong> was picked off by Quincy Black<\/strong> in the end zone.<\/p>\n The major injury of the game occurred to Saints head coach, Sean Payton<\/strong>, who sustained a leg injury when he was rolled up on while standing on the sideline.<\/p>\n Before the Bucs had time to rest, they were boarding a plane and heading for London, England where they will face the Chicago Bears this Sunday at Wimbley Stadium. The game has been sold out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Tampa Bay Buccaneers put behind them the 48-3 disaster they suffered a week ago against the San Francisco 49ers, and now have sole possession of first place in the NFC South. Although the Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints have identical 4-2 records, the Bucs have a half-game lead after their thrilling 26-20 win Sunday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}