-The Bucs' offense again moved the ball up and down the field extremely well. Well to the tune of 501 total yards of offense. Unfortunately, and pretty incredibly, it resulted in just three points on the scoreboard for Tampa Bay. And yes, that is a record in case you were wondering. It's the most yards a team has put up while scoring three or less points in NFL history. The issues came once the Bucs got inside the opposing 20-yard line. Five official trips to the red zone and none resulted in a touchdown. The last trip saw the Buccaneers at the two-yard line before quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick was sacked and then lost the ball in the process. This was as Tampa Bay was trying to get back in the game down two scores in the fourth quarter. Nothing seemed to go their way inside the 20s, but it wasn't for lack of getting there.

-The up and down and back and forth of the offense did serve a critical purpose in keeping the defense off the field, which in turn led to one of the better defensive performances of the year. The defensive line in particular registered three sacks on the day by three different players. Rookie defensive tackle Vita Vea notched the first sack of his NFL career, in fact. Veteran defensive tackle Gerald McCoy followed it up on the very next play with a sack of his own, good for his third on the year. Defensive end Carl Nassib had his fourth sack of the season in the third quarter, which is now a new season-high for the third-year player.

The defense overall did a good job of containing Washington's veteran running back Adrian Peterson, who despite being in his tenth season as a ball carrier is still a legitimate ground threat. He's surpassed or been near the 100-yard rushing mark this season five times so far. The Bucs held him to 68 yards and just 3.58 yards per carry. What's more, is he was held to just two 'explosive' runs (of 12 yards or more) and was actually held to two or less yards 13 times throughout the game, many of which were actually negative plays. One player that was in on more than one play where Peterson was dropped for a loss was middle linebacker Adarius Taylor. In Washington's first series of the second quarter, Taylor was underneath and as Peterson took the hand off, shifting to try his luck toward the strong side where linebacker Lavonte David had taken sliding Washington guard Tony Bergstrom to the ground, hw as slowed up enough for Taylor to disengage from his block and cut outside to meet Peterson, taking him down two yards before the line of scrimmage.

-Now onto a couple individual performances that deserve some credit. The Bucs had a pair of 100-yard receivers, though probably not the two you're expecting. The unlikely contributor to this tandem was actually not a receiver at all, but running back Jacquizz Rodgers, who recorded his first 100-yard receiving game of his career as he took mostly short passes for 102 yards. He did it alongside wide receiver Chris Godwin, who had his first 100-yard receiving game with 103 yards, marking the second of his career.

Though his 102 yards technically came on pass plays, Rodgers still did most of the work with a lot of catch-and-run efforts. He had the fifth-highest receiving total of any player in the league through Sunday's games and did so on only eight receptions. His first big burst came on third-and-eight in the second quarter with the Bucs near their own 20-yard line. Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick stepped up to avoid pressure and dumped it off to Rodgers who had found a hole in front of him and turned around to provide Fitzpatrick an out. Fitzpatrick wasn't done yet either, as he raced up to the line of gain to attempt a block for Rodgers, and it sort of worked. Rodgers was able to scamper for 24 yards to get the Bucs to midfield. It was a drive that led to Tampa Bay's only points of the game on a 33-yard field goal.