NFL Week 4 Game Recap: Tampa Bay Buccaneers 26, New Orleans Saints 9

Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers kept things rolling with a surprisingly good start to the season, knocking off the NFC South favorite New Orleans Saints by a score of 26-9 on the road.

Offensive spotlight: The Saints surprised many by electing to give Derek Carr the start despite an AC sprain in his shoulder sustained last week. Carr completed 61.1% of his passes for just 3.5 yards per attempt, with 69.4% of those attempts short of the first-down marker.

With the array of weaponry the Saints have at their disposal, it’s hard not to think that Jameis Winston would have been a better option than a restricted Carr going into the game.

Defensive spotlight: At his best, Vita Vea is one of the very best defensive linemen in the game, and we got to see that version of him against the Saints, at least when it came to rushing the passer. Vea recorded two sacks on his 24 pass-rushing snaps along with multiple other wins. His run defense wasn’t quite on that same level, so his final PFF grade might not reflect that pass-rushing dominance.

Rookie spotlight: Rookie Trey Palmer has become a big part of the Tampa Bay offense, even if it hasn’t necessarily been reflected in production. He played a massive 50 snaps, the same as Chris Godwin, and made a nice play in the end zone to score a touchdown on one of his three targets. His two catches went for a total of six yards, which is an impressively low 0.19 yards per route run, but playing that number of snaps in the first place is a good sign of things to come.

Box Score

Passing

Rushing

Receiving