Brad Idzik Reveals Top Focus In Coaching Bucs WRs

There’s been plenty to take in for the new Bucs offense this offseason. That’s why it helped having new wide receivers coach Brad Idzik come with offensive coordinator Dave Canales from Seattle to Tampa Bay as the only other coach on the staff who knows this offense that the Bucs will run this season.

Canales’ offense will be a vast departure from Bruce Arians’ system that Byron Leftwich has called over the past four seasons. There will be a lot more pre-snap motion along with play-action and quarterback bootlegs and waggles, but that’s just the beginning. Tampa Bay had many things to get through even before the start of training camp, and the team took full advantage of the offseason program. To get every one of Idzik’s wide receivers trending in the right direction, there was one main priority that he wanted to focus on.

It wasn’t catching the ball or learning a specific play. Those are givens. What Idzik wanted all of the receivers to get down was the footwork.

“I love the structure of phase one, phase two and jumping into phase three of OTAs, it gives you a lot of time to work individual drills,” Idzik said on a recent episode of the Pewter Report Podcast. “That was the point of emphasis for us was footwork.”

Brad Idzik Explains The “Tom Moore Approach”

The Bucs are installing an offense that has shorter routes like hitches, mesh routes and slants that give the receivers plenty of room to get open after a quick pass and gain yards after the catch. In order to have everybody buy in, it was assistant coach and recent Hall of Famer Tom Moore who spoke to the importance of putting in their due diligence.

“Tom Moore gave a great little speech to our guys about mastering your craft and then doing 1,000 reps, and it’s still not enough to have that muscle memory so you got to steal those reps,” Idzik said.

“We would take the Tom Moore approach when it came to individual drills. Our guys would laugh at it, by the end of it, it was kind of tongue and cheek, Chris (Godwin) and Russell (Gage) were guessing ‘Okay, what drills is Brad doing today?’ It’s like, well, we’re going to take the Tom Moore approach, we’re trying to get to a thousand on the hitch route, we’re trying to get to a thousand on the slant route versus inside leverage or outside leverage.”

Canales has been on the record describing the offense as “eye candy” when you watch it. It’s also been known as “quarterback friendly.” This is all for the viewer who likes watching an offense succeed because what they’re doing is trying to make every way they line up to look exactly the same in order to confuse the defense. And it all starts with the footwork from each receiver.

“Everything for us, once we got past the basics of our stance and start, our vocabulary and all that, everything was footwork,” Idzik said. “We want everything to mirror up, we want everything to look the same coming off the ball for the DBs. For us, we would just slow it down, have our guys really hone in on what am I doing if there’s an inefficiency in my route? Is it in the beginning? Is it in the stem or is it at the top? There’s really three phases to the route.

“And footwork is everything. It’s funny when you watch it at first it looks like ‘Oh my gosh, are you ruining a potential NFL receiver?’ Because now the wheels are turning, he’s thinking, but no, now we’re just finding out how can we fine tune these guys to make them that much better. They’re all phenomenal athletes, but we slow them down we make them jog, we make them walk.”

Brad Idzik Is Working With Deven Thompkins To Improve

Not every player is going to figure things out at the same rate. Brad Idzik shared a story about taking time with Deven Thompkins to get the fundamentals down. Thompkins could be huge for the Bucs this season, as he’s in the running to be their kick returner again and his agility is a trait that Canales can work with. He missed a couple of practices for precautionary injury reasons, but it may have inadvertently helped him.

“Deven Thompkins is one of those guys who is super fast,” Idzik said. “And everything he does whether its thinking, whether its executing, whether its going for the ball, he’s super aggressive. The footwork thing for him at first was difficult, it was tough to slow him down, it was tough to say ‘Hey, I want you to focus on where can you be better on your routes? Let’s talk through the steps.’

“I think honestly one of the better things that might’ve happened to him, you don’t want a guy to get injured, but take a couple days there. He didn’t even get injured, just a little strain, we took him out of a couple practices where we would take those special teams periods and we would walk through footwork up and down the field.”

Thompkins wowed with a strong training camp and preseason last year as an undrafted rookie. He initially stuck on the practice squad before taking over kick return duties once the team parted ways with Jaelon Darden. He saw little time at receiver, totaling five catches for 32 yards, but this offseason has been a big one for the young receiver. Idzik said he told Thompkins that the practices he missed during the summer could work to his advantage if he used the time on the sideline correctly.

“I was like ‘Deven, take this right now, make this your warmup in the offseason when you go in the summer and you can now get that muscle memory of the footwork,’” Idzik said. “‘So when we come back and we hit training camp and we’re watching film of you in the one-on-one period when shots are really flying, now we can say remember what we talked about when we were just walking through your steps.’

“When we talk about footwork, that’s everything for us. These guys are going to be able to catch the ball, we’re going to catch the ball in the team periods and we’re going to get after it that way, but it starts with the feet.”