Bucs use 24 straight points to top Seahawks 24-7 Roy Cummings, The Tampa Tribune, published 21 December 2009 It took a while. Almost an entire season. Finally, on a dreary December day at soggy Qwest Field, they found it. The key now is to keep it. That's the easy part. After all, if the Bucs ever feel like they're losing their offensive identity again, all they'll have to do is go back and look at the tape of the 24-7 beating they handed the Seahawks on Sunday. It's all right there. "That's it," center Jeff Faine said as a smile widened across his face. "That's our identity. That's what we need to be. That's how we need to play." Faine could have been speaking of the entire team. The defense did quite a job, too, forcing five takeaways and limiting the Seahawks to a second-quarter score. And the special teams did a good job of consistently creating short fields for the offense. That's nothing new, though. The defense has been playing old-fashioned "Buc Ball" for about a month now, and the special teams have been creating short fields for the offense for much of the season. It wasn't until Sunday, though, that the offense began to take full advantage of all that the defense and special teams provided it and in the way the Bucs had planned for it to during their offseason overhaul. For those who may have forgotten, that plan called for the Bucs to lean on the run to a point where they lured extra defenders to the line and into a situation that opened up their downfield passing game. For a variety of reasons, most of which can be traced to the fact they're now on their second coordinator and third quarterback, the Bucs lost track of that game plan. Until Sunday. Determined to establish their offensive identity before the season runs out, the Bucs committed to the run. And it opened up a passing attack that turned the game in the Bucs' favor. "(Committing to) the run really helped," said rookie quarterback Josh Freeman, who bounced back from two shaky outings and a shaky start to complete 16 of 26 passes for 205 yards and two touchdowns. We were running the ball so well that they had the end crashing down on us every time. You really have to take your hat off to the line and the backs because we were running so well." Not too many teams have been able to say that after facing the Seahawks. Seattle went into Sunday's game ranked 11th overall against the run, and they played like an 11th-ranked rush defense early on. But instead of quickly abandoning their running game - something the Bucs have done regularly this season - they stuck with it. By the second quarter, their commitment was paying dividends. "Early on, on my first two or three series, it wasn't pretty," running back Cadillac Williams said of the Bucs' rushing effort. "It was 2 or 3 yards here and there and that was it. But the main thing is the consistency, because a defense can only be so perfect. Eventually there are going to be lanes in there and I can definitely take advantage of them." Williams and Derrick Ward did just that, combining to run 31 times for 133 yards, with each breaking off at least one run of 20 yards or more and each scoring a touchdown. "Those two got going, and we had our two-headed monster going for us today," Bucs coach Raheem Morris said. Both of the Bucs' touchdowns came off screen passes, one to Williams for 22 yards and one to Ward for 6 yards. "They've always been in our back pocket and today they were great calls," said Freeman, who also ran in from 2 yards out to complete a 2-point conversion following the touchdown pass to Ward in the third quarter. "(On) the one (to Williams) we had play-action, and you set it like you're going to throw a bomb and then you just dump it off. After I faked the handoff everybody just dropped and I was like, 'Oh, this is going to be good,'" Freeman said. Even better was the way Freeman bounced back. After throwing eight interceptions in his two previous games, this one started badly with another pick on his first attempt. That set the tone for another disjointed first half, when Freeman completed five of 12 passes for 61 yards. But with the running game providing a diversion for him, he bounced back strong in the second half. "Starting out I don't want to say I was antsy, but I never got into a rhythm that first half," he said. "I made a couple of plays but I also missed a lot of throws that I would normally make. But starting the second half, (coordinator Greg) Olson just said, 'Hey, we're just going to keep doing what we're doing,' which is running the ball. They just need me to make something happen off of that and I that's what I did." Again, he had help. From his defense and his special teams, including kicker Connor Barth, who bounced back to make three field goals after hitting the right upright on his first attempt. But that's precisely what had Morris smiling afterward. As excited as he was to finally have found an offensive identity, he was even more thrilled to have won a game with all three phases contributing equally. "That was a nice game, a good game by our football team," he said. "We went out and ran the football and we were able to open up our passing game with our run and use our play-action and win as a team today. That's what you want and that's what the whole end of the season is about for us. It's about progressing, forming (an identity) and getting these guys to believe. They saw it work today."