How good is Tampa Bay supposed to be?

[ebongreen]

I just played Tampa in the NFC championship of my latest franchise, and blanked them 49-0 in by far the best game I've ever had against that franchise. Now it helps that Damon Huard was running with a batch of relatively-talent free wide receivers, but still...

My keys to success: man-blitz and/or eight-in-the-box on early downs to stop the run, and play no-blitz deep-zones on late. And when I say deep-zone, I'm talking Cover-3 or Cover-4 (quarters coverage). If you play 3-4, the play is Drop Zone where OLBs drop into curl zones near the sidelines and ILBs into middle hook zones, and your DBs each take a quarter of the field. The Tampa passing playbook eats man coverage alive, even with stud corners like Nnamdi and Juran Riley.

YMMV, but that's what worked for me.

[cloudedskate]

Tampa is annoyingly good. I have never had the success that ebongreen has had against them. I have played them the last 2 years with my Bears. The first time I lost 24-21 in OT. They were 1 of my 2 losses in the regular season. I beat them the second time around 31-17. I did tons of draws with Ray Rice and he finished around 20 carries for 170 yards or so. I play them again this year in Week 12. Following that is a match-up with the Colts who are insanely good even without Peyton Manning. They beat me in the Superbowl with CLEO LEMON!!!!! as their QB. Now Sage Rosenfels has the starting job.