The good news is that the Patriots’ defense is better than it looked Sunday night in Tampa. The bad news is how much better remains to be seen.
 
The season’s second pre-season game, like most pre-season games, means little or nothing, barring a serious injury to a key player (which may have happened), because one never knows how seriously one team is taking things and how disinterested their opponent may be about the entire exercise. Certainly on a hot, humid night in Tampa it would be overstating the Patriots’ defensive enthusiasm in the extreme to label it disinterested.

In fact, that defense was barely in attendance, but one thing you can be sure of is that they will get off blocks far better on Sept. 7 than they did in the opening half in Tampa, during which the Bucs rolled through them, ran over them and threw behind and in front of them on their way to a 17-3 lead and a yardage disparity of 234 to 87. When it was all said and done, the Pats had suffered a 27-10 defeat at Raymond James Stadium.

Whether the cornerback combination of Fernando Bryant and Ellis Hobbs will cover better than Sunday night is a point of debate because they and their secondary mates (absent Rodney Harrison, who didn’t play, and Brandon Meriweather, who was injured early in the first quarter and did not return) were riddled by Brian Griese (8-for-8 on the game’s opening drive, which went 80 yards on 17 plays in a nearly 10-minute drive that needed four third-down conversions to stay alive.

Neither Bryant nor Hobbs looked particularly sound, nor did a run defense that was not only smoked for 170 yards by game's end, but also was manhandled upfront by inside traps, straight ahead power blocking and running that hit the edge of their defense and kept on going.

Rookie inside linebacker Jerod Mayo did not exhibit the kind of impact he did a week ago although he did blow up the Bucs’ fullback on one running play, stoning him behind the line of scrimmage as he came up to block him. Unfortunately, nobody filled behind him and Michael Bennett ran for a seven-yard gain.

One can assume that if he makes that kind of play in the regular season there will be several Patriot defenders filling the right gaps and giving whoever is carrying the ball a lot less room to run than Bennett found after Mayo forced him to go back inside.

Bucs’ quarterback Brian Griese cautioned any concerned Patriot fans or any celebrating Patriot opponent when he told NFL Network before halftime that, “Their m.o. is to save their good stuff for the season,’’ meaning New England’s defensive game plan was, shall we say, not exotic.

But he also pointed out that “They’re still good plays and you’ve still got to block them.’’ What he was saying was they did block them, which was obvious.

The front three was not particularly stout, although defensive end Richard Seymour did put some pressure on Tampa’s quarterbacks early, but the more important point was that the Bucs’ runners gained considerable yardage against New England’s first defensive unit after the first hit was put on them. That is unlike the Patriot defense, which normally tends to swarm around runners. Surely head coach Bill Belichick and his defensive staff will be harping about that all week long and it will improve between now and the season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs.

As easily as Tampa ran the ball, the bigger concern still remains a secondary in its infancy after the departure of cornerbacks Asante Samuel and Randall Gay. Hobbs is one returning starter at corner but if Bryant is indeed the best of the rest one needs to wonder. Neither looked particularly good and safety Antwain Spann got run over several times when he started in place of the missing Harrison.

If there was an upside it was that the defensive line and their starting linebacker group all came away physically intact. The same may not be true for Meriweather, who left with what the Patriots called at halftime “a leg injury.’’

That was stating the obvious. The severity of the injury will become clear in time. Just as obvious was that the Patriots’ defense is not as bad as it played in the first half against the Buccaneers. How much better will depend on Mayo, Bryant and the rest of a secondary that is still in a fluid state. Which is a nice way of saying, they are not quite ready for prime time. Fortunately, NFL prime time won’t begin for another 20 days. Three weeks in pre-season is a lot of time to get the kinks worked out.

Ron can be reached at rborges@weei.com