Winston needs to cut down on turnovers, not TDs

by Gary Shelton on June 16, 2017 · 0 comments

in general, NFL, Tampa Bay Bucs

Winston wants to be a star./JEFFREY S. KING

Winston wants to be a star./JEFFREY S. KING

Friday, 2 a.m.

Efficient is a good word.

Careful, maybe.

Surgical.

On the other hand, no one wants Jameis Winston to be safe. It's a dirty word. The guy's a quarterback, not an insurance salesman.

“There's such a fine line, because you want to protect the football but at the same time you want to experiment,” said

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Winston needs to cut down on his turnovers./JEFFREY S. KING

Winston needs to cut down on his turnovers./JEFFREY S. KING

Bucs' coach Dirk Koetter. “We're working with new things, with new personnel.

“Like, we've been doing a lot of red zone work the last two days and we're trying to work some back-shoulders to O.J. (Howard). Well, if you don't throw them to him, if you don't ever throw him any, you're not going to complete any. So we have to temper that. When we don't have fans out here, when we don't have media out here, we don't have to tell you guys what it looks like. When you guys are out here, you're going to make your own judgments, and some of them are right and some of them aren't right."

Koetter has a bigger point, too. All quarterbacks throw interceptions; it's part of trying to make a play. A quarterback who doesn't risk a lot isn't rewarded a lot.

Winston had 42 turnovers in his first two seasons, off-setting much of the success he has had.

According to Koetter, Winston is driven to be a better player.

Jameis is different in that he knows he can play in the NFL. He knows he can be a successful player. Jameis – no one has higher expectations for his performance than he does. I mean, he's aiming to be elite, not just one of 32. And because he has such high expectations, and we have high expectations, it's a never-ending process. We're hard on Jameis and he's hard on himself. Always improving, but not where it needs to be."

Maybe that's why Winston is such a fan of practice.

"'What's changed,' was the question. What's changed is, when you come into the league as a rookie, you had great success in college but you're playing with grown men now. There's just a lot more thrown at you. The disguise is so much different, the way the defense looks. He's been through 32 NFL starts. Experience is the best teacher, we've talked about this before. The Tom Bradys and Matt Ryans of the world have got a lot of reps on Jameis. We called practice early there and Jameis is the one guy in the huddle who wanted to keep going. He's the one guy who wanted it to keep going."

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