After going behind 17-3 with six minutes to go in the second quarter against the Dallas Cowboys, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers saw themselves in a deep hole on prime time TV against the top NFC team.
In a situation where your team is behind early, you normally want a quarterback who is a leader, who is measured and puts things into perspective and has the belief that they can still lead their team to a win. The Bucs instead have Jameis Winston and he did none of that during one puzzling boneheaded play close to halftime.
After running back Doug Martin was stuffed for a five yard loss deep in the Cowboys red zone, Winston lost his cool after three Cowboys were trying to tackle Martin after forward progress was lost and head butted linebacker Justin Durant, prompting a 15 yard penalty and knocking the Buccaneers out from consideration of scoring a touchdown.
JAMEIS AND BUTTHEAD https://t.co/fA5Mf3SeBo pic.twitter.com/0MbnBucMC7
— SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) December 19, 2016
For one thing, the “head butt” was embarrassing and awful. Yes, the act of the head butt was bad but I meant the actual technique and execution was terrible. Winston looked like a wild animal who was trying to present in order to obtain a mate. If you’re going to get a 15 yard personal foul penalty, at least earn the penalty.
In all seriousness, the act was terrible and potentially took points off the board. Instead of a potential touchdown to only be down by seven at halftime, the Buccaneers had to settle for a field goal to be down 17-6.
In fairness, despite his boneheaded error, Winston led the Bucs with a couple touchdowns in the third quarter and got out to a 20-17 lead. But after three Dan Bailey field goals, Winston threw a game ending interception and lost 26-20, keeping them just out of the playoff picture.
For Jameis Winston, hopefully he takes this as a learning experience and uses that to improve himself and his team. Winston is 22 and he definitely isn’t the first person to have done something like this to cost their team a win, just ask Zinedine Zidane. But he really does need to think out there and make sure he cannot do things like that. It’s inexcusable for anyone to head butt another player, it’s even more inexcusable for the starting quarterback to do that.
