On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers wanted badly to defeat the Detroit Lions. The Lions had kept them out of the playoffs in 2010 when the Bucs lost 23-20. It was anticipated that the Bucs, especially with the new draft picks, would handle the Lions and make the crowd at Raymond James Stadium yell for more.<\/p>\n
But, it didn\u2019t turn out like that. The Bucs lost their season opener 27-20, and the game was never really competitive.<\/p>\n
The Buccaneer offense looked pitiful for three quarters, and the defense looked worse for the entire game.<\/p>\n
On a day the Bucs were supposed to honor the late Lee Roy Selmon<\/strong>, they looked like they were never really prepared for the Lions. Buc quarterback Josh Freeman<\/strong> finished the evening completing 28 of 43 passes for 257 yards, 1 touchdown and 1 interception. His counterpart, Matthew Stafford<\/strong>, finished 24 of 33 for 305 yards, 3 touchdowns and 1 interception.<\/p>\n The leading ground gainer for the Bucs was Freeman<\/strong> who gained 26 yards on four carries. LeGarrett Blount ran 5 times for 15 yards, and Earnest Graham<\/strong> carried the ball 6 times for 13 yards. Calvin \u201cMegatron\u201d Johnson<\/strong> had 6 catches for 88 yards and a pair of touchdowns. The Buccaneer touchdowns came from an interception by Aqib Talib and a 5-yard pass to Mike Williams<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Next week the Bucs travel to Minnesota to face the Vikings in a 1 p. m. game that will be televised locally. The Bucs didn\u2019t lose any ground in the NFC South, because the Saints, Falcons, and Panthers also lost their season openers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers wanted badly to defeat the Detroit Lions. The Lions had kept them out of the playoffs in 2010 when the Bucs lost 23-20. It was anticipated that the Bucs, especially with the new draft picks, would handle the Lions and make the crowd at Raymond James Stadium yell for […]<\/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-9840","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\/9840","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=9840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDetroit\u2019s ground game totaled 126 yards and the Bucs could only muster 56 yards.<\/p>\n