How the Bucs' secondary held Ja'Marr Chase to 12 yards

For two weeks, the story around Tampa Bay's cornerback room was almost entirely negative. Jacob Parrish was about to make his first NFL start on the outside. Benjamin Morrison, a rookie a year ago, was the primary backup. Analyst Jay Gruden had summed up the group on Barstool with four blunt words: "you got no corners." BucsWorld's own preview of the matchup flagged the same worry, noting Ja'Marr Chase was walking into a building against a secondary that had barely played together, in Ja'Marr Chase's record chase meets Tampa Bay's secondary.

Key facts

• Ja'Marr Chase caught 2 passes for 12 yards on 4 targets against Tampa Bay on September 13, his lowest receiving yardage since November 2023.
• Cincinnati tight end Mike Gesicki was the Bengals' most productive target instead, with 5 catches for 78 yards and a touchdown on 7 targets.
• Cornerback Jacob Parrish left the game in the second quarter with a back sprain; X-rays and an MRI both came back clean, Todd Bowles said Monday, September 14.
• Benjamin Morrison replaced Parrish and did not allow a reception, and SI's Onsi graded the Buccaneers' cornerbacks A plus for containing Chase and Tee Higgins.
• Tampa Bay still lost 33-27 because of four turnovers, three Baker Mayfield fumbles and one Bucky Irving fumble, that Cincinnati converted into points.

Then Sunday happened. Chase finished with 2 catches for 12 yards on 4 targets, his lowest receiving output since November 2023. Cincinnati still won 33-27, but not because its best receiver beat Tampa Bay's inexperienced corners. He barely got the ball.

The numbers behind a quiet afternoon

Chase's 4 targets were fewer than Mike Gesicki (7), Tee Higgins (6) and running back Chase Brown (6) saw. Higgins caught 3 of 6 targets for 59 yards, a respectable day but not a big one. The receiver who actually hurt Tampa Bay was Gesicki, who caught 5 of 7 targets for 78 yards and a touchdown, more receiving yards than Chase and Higgins combined. Buccaneers.com's own postgame breakdown put it plainly: Gesicki was "exploiting the middle of the field and off coverage by Tampa Bay."

That detail matters as much as Chase's stat line. Joe Burrow did not abandon the passing game when his top receiver got taken away. He simply found the softer coverage underneath, working Gesicki over the middle while his outside cornerbacks stayed attached to Chase and Higgins.

Scheme over shadow

Tampa Bay did not solve Chase by assigning one cornerback to shadow him around the field. Todd Bowles had said as much before kickoff, telling reporters the Bucs would not get "caught up in who they are as opposed to worrying about executing our scheme," a pregame comment that lines up with how Bowles' defense has operated all along: zone based coverage, where corners generally own an area of the field rather than a man, as the site's earlier breakdown of the Bowles defense has documented.

Zyon McCollum, the fifth year veteran of the group, and Benjamin Morrison both drew praise for the result. SI's Onsi graded Tampa Bay's cornerbacks A plus after the game, crediting the coverage of McCollum and Morrison for keeping Chase and Higgins in check all afternoon. For a group that had been picked apart in the preseason storyline, containing the receiver chasing Randy Moss' single season touchdown record was as clean a rebuttal as the unit could have written on the field.

Parrish goes down, Morrison steps up

The afternoon still had a costly moment. Jacob Parrish, in his first career start on the outside, left in the second quarter with a back injury and did not return, as BucsWorld covered in Jacob Parrish has a back sprain, X-rays and MRI clear after Bengals game. Bowles said Monday the injury is a back sprain and that both an X-ray and an MRI came back clean.

Morrison, stepping into significant game action for the first time, did not allow a single reception the rest of the way. Whatever doubts existed about Tampa Bay's depth behind its top two cornerbacks, Morrison answered them in real time, the same afternoon the group needed him most.

A defense that still lost the game

None of this changed the final score. Tampa Bay's defense scored a touchdown of its own on Josiah Trotter's pick six, detailed in Josiah Trotter's sack and pick-six in his debut is an NFL first, and Trotter also had the Buccaneers' only sack of the game, but the Buccaneers still lost 33-27 because their own offense could not hold onto the football. Baker Mayfield lost three fumbles and Bucky Irving lost another, four turnovers in all, and Cincinnati turned them into points, as BucsWorld's recap of the loss covered in full. Bowles was blunt about the defense's own share of the blame afterward too, saying he wanted to know "how many tackles we missed" and pointing to penalties as well as the turnovers.

What it means for Cleveland

Tampa Bay hosts the Browns on September 20 with the same question mark hanging over the cornerback room, just pointed in a different direction. Parrish's status for that game had not been decided as of Monday, and if he sits, Morrison is next in line opposite McCollum again. A cornerback group that spent two weeks being written off proved it could hold one of the league's best receivers to his quietest game in nearly three years. Whether that was a product of Cincinnati's own game plan or a real sign of what this secondary can do over a full season is the question Cleveland will test next.