When Rondé Barber sat waiting for the 2-hour lightning delay to end in the Week 2 game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Cleveland Browns, he contemplated getting in his car and driving home. That’s how bad the Bucs – his old team – were playing against a squad nobody had taken seriously heading into the week. But after that 23-19 defeat at the hands of the Browns, the Bucs legend decided to put the franchise on blast, starting with the players, and stretching to head coach Todd Bowles.

“The mood is not great,” Barber said on his latest WFLA streaming show. “There’s too many mistakes. There’s a lack of urgency, if you will. In my mind, when I look at them go onto the field, there’s got to be a little bit of a sense of a defining characteristic of your team, and through Week 2, I don’t know what that is like right now.

“It’s mistakes, it’s bust, it’s lack of execution, all the little things. I mean, we made light of it after Week 1 and said, ‘Oh, Week one’s just the fourth preseason game.’ Well, Week 2 can’t be the fifth preseason game. At some point, you have to start hitting your stride and [it] doesn’t feel like they’re in their stride at all right now on either side of the ball.”

Now, offensively speaking, the Browns held quarterback Baker Mayfield to just 182 yards for one touchdown and a pick while landing 3 sacks on him. The Bucs could only convert 7 of their 16 third down attempts, and lost the game even though they got more yards and possession than the Browns. But it wasn’t all on the quarterback or his weapons. The biggest letdown, for Rondé Barber, was the defense.

“It is clear what our defense needs to be better at,” Barber, the Hall of Fame cornerback/safety said. “It needs to be taking away the quick throws. They need to be closer in coverage and stop. I said this last week, I’m going to say it again: they have to stop covering grass. You put on a board what our defense is supposed to look like, and I think our guys get it. Although, they did have a ton of bust in that game. I’ve seen some people trying to diagnose what was going wrong with the Bucs defense. It’s like, they’re bust, they’re just guys messing up, man.

“It’s not knowing how to do your job, it’s: know what the play call is, know where you’re supposed to be in the defense and then go execute it. I feel like for so much of the secondary, especially the coverage unit, they’re so focused on what they’re trying to do that they don’t know how to do it now.

“[Left inside linebacker Alex] Anzalone doesn’t miss tackles, man. That’s not why we brought this guy in here, to have four or five missed tackles in the first two weeks of the season. That’s just not who he was as a player last year. So, there’s some dynamic going on, whether it’s not understanding what this role is in the defense, not understanding angles, maybe not having enough tackles in preseason, I don’t know what it is, but something is hamstringing this defense in critical moments.”

If we talk about the defensive lapses, while the Bucs landed 2 sacks on Deshaun Watson, they allowed him to run free, throwing quick throws that got him 238 air yards and 2 touchdowns. The Browns got 10 passing 1st downs to the Bucs’ 7. Even though the Browns were poorer in 3rd-down efficiency (5-of-13), they still managed to hold their lead once play resumed post the lightning delay.

What’s more, the Bucs only landed 37 solo tackles (67 combined), six tackles for loss, 4 QB Hits, and 2 passes defended. For a team run by the defensive mind of Todd Bowles, that’s not a pretty stat line, and that’s exactly the point Barber drives home.

“I’m always a guy that believes that this team – because it’s the defensive head coach, because Todd Bowles is the leader of this team – that it’s got to have a defensive identity,” Barber said. “Everybody wants to talk about Baker and all these offensive weapons or whatever, but you have to find a way to get one stop on defense. One stop. That’s how you win football games in the NFL.

“You play on the margins all the time. Every game comes down to the last possession, a last second field goal, last second throw into the end zone that can win the football game. But if you’re not executing, you’re not following coaching, if you’re not understanding down and distant, situational football and stuff, if you’re not doing that, then you don’t win. That’s just the bottom line in the NFL. It happens every single week. So, that’s where we are.”

The Buccaneers now face the Minnesota Vikings for their Week 3 clash. They are coming to Raymond James Stadium to build on their 2-0 record. Having suffered a grim defeat at home last week, they now fight to prove they can be competitive this season. If the Bucs can finally get their first win of the season, it will start by winning the battle in the trenches. It will be interesting to see how Todd Bowles prepares his team for what Rondé Barber calls a “must show up week.”