Things were already slipping out of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ hands, but they successfully engineered a 16-15 win against the Kansas City Chiefs on August 22. Buccaneers rookie quarterback Jalon Daniels opened up about how he pulled off an offensive strategy to bait the Chiefs’ defense into a penalty.

“I literally came into the huddle, I said, ‘All right, guys, we got a third-and-one right here,’” said Daniels in the post-game presser. “’We’re gonna try to be able to get them to jump offsides.’ And obviously, we had a few false starts in the first half. So when I came into the huddle, I said, ‘We cannot have that right now.’ And just basically tried to reiterate that as much as I could.

And then when we got on the line of scrimmage, we were able to make them jump offsides.”

Tampa Bay had been flagged for two false starts in the first half, and the last thing they needed was another penalty. Daniels took over from Jake Browning before the 4th quarter, and ensured they were penalty-free, especially since the Chiefs had a five-point lead at that point.

The Bucs were at 3rd-and-1 at the beginning of the 4th quarter with Daniels in play, but the Chiefs’ Emmanuel Ogbah was flagged for a neutral zone infraction. It pushed the Buccaneers five yards ahead, and in three plays, Daniels set up the Bucs’ special teams unit for a field goal.

The job wasn’t done yet. The Bucs were still five points down, but Daniels engineered some great plays and edged past the Chiefs with a 16-15 victory. Head coach Todd Bowles was impressed with Daniels’ performance. 

“He did a good job closing out the game second week in a row,” said the head coach. “He made some plays, some clutch plays. Obviously, there’s a lot of things he’s got to learn. But at the same time, he goes out there and he makes things happen and he gives us a chance to win.”

He also impressed against the New York Jets the previous week, completing 10 of 15 passes for 111 yards and guiding two touchdown drives after halftime. 

Daniels appeared to struggle with snaps from under center, since he’d spent most of his amateur career taking snaps at shotgun. However, when it came to pulling the opponent into trouble, Daniels scored full marks.

“At the end of the day, one thing that I learned from the University of Kansas is something called rule of zero,” he shared in the post-game presser. “Rule of zero just means you wanna be able to get back to the line of scrimmage no matter what. You don’t wanna make a bad play worse.”

Daniels still has to work on some areas before the season begins, but he seems to be making a good case to lock down the QB2 spot for himself at Tampa Bay.