Top performers on Sunday for Bucs

Two plays were the difference in Sunday’s 27-20 loss for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against the Dallas Cowboys.

It was a 67 yard fumble return for a touchdown early in the second quarter, as well as the botched handoff between Winston and Bobo Wilson that gave Dallas the ball inside the Buccaneers’ five yard line. Outside of those two plays, the Buccaneers played a pretty damn good game for a 5-9 team on the road facing a division leader, but those two plays cost the team 14 points.

Winning football teams simply don’t make mistakes like that. With that being said, Sunday’s game did bring some top performers.

Adam Humphries: Would it be crazy to say he’s the best slot receiver in football? Well, maybe a little bit, but he certainly is up there among the league’s best. Hump finished the game with 10 catches on 12 targets for 79 yards and had multiple third down conversions throughout. Week in and week out Hump shows up and does his job. In just a couple months, he should and most likely will be paid handsomely by the Buccaneers. Hump currently has 71 catches for 750 yards and five touchdowns on the season.

Mike Evans: In other words, the sky is blue. Evans fell five yards short of the single season receiving yards record in Buccaneers history, but he did haul in six catches for 90 yards and a touchdown. He could have had a lot more if it wasn’t for a couple missed opportunities, but nonetheless, it was another impressive day for the fifth year veteran. Evans will surely break the record next week at home against the Atlanta Falcons.

Vita Vea: The rookie is really coming into his own as the season winds down. Coming off arguably the best game of his young career, Vea had another solid outing in Jerry’s world. He registered his third sack of the season and was a weak facemask call away from another. Him and Gerald McCoy also did a good job of containing the Cowboys fourth ranked rushing attack. What won’t show up in the stat sheet is the couple of throws that Vea forced because of the pressure he brought. I counted at least three separate occasions in which that occured.

Honorable mention: Lavonte David who had five tackles, with two of them being for a loss.