The NFL is a copycat league. Spot a trend from a successful team, and you can bet everyone will attempt to imitate it.

That's really what the off-season is for if you are part of a coaching staff.

"We do a lot of tape study," Bucs coach Dirk Koetter said. "We study ourselves and all the things we talked about earlier that we need to do better. We're making teach tapes or making things to show the players. We're studying other teams."

Among the biggest areas the Bucs need to improve is in the red zone. Koetter frequently mentions that the story of 2017 was their inability to score touchdowns in the red zone. The Bucs ranked 24th with a red-zone touchdown percentage of 49.1 percent. That was significantly below Koetter's goal of 55 to 60 percent. Tampa Bay's average points-per-trip was 4.34.

Five teams last season reached the red-zone goal that Koetter has set for the Bucs, and four of them made it to the conference championship game — the Eagles, Vikings, Patriots and Jaguars. (The other team was Green Bay).

"There were five teams in the league that were 60 percent touchdowns in the red zone; we studied those five teams," said Koetter.

The other area of study was the run-pass option, or RPO. Every team has that element in its offense, and it's become the norm in college football. The Eagles may have utilized it best last season with quarterbacks Carson Wentz and Nick Foles.

"We studied RPOs a lot. because that's going to be a hot trend next year,'' Koetter said. "So we studied all the RPO teams in the league, defense and offense.

Bucs quarterback Jameis Winston has never been known as a running quarterback. But he has surprising mobility in the pocket and, as a rookie, rushed for six touchdowns. Still, his career-high rushing mark is 213 yards, and last season he had only 33 rushing attempts.

"We had a small (RPO) package, and I think everybody in the NFL was doing a tiny amount, some teams more than others," Koetter said. "I think what Philadelphia did in their run to the Super Bowl, teams (are going to emulate). That's just the way this league works. Teams study the most successful teams. Based on what you saw Philly do and what it does to the defense, I think you're going to see more and more teams do that.

"We're not talking about a full-fledged spread offense here, but we're just talking about incorporating some more RPOs. What that really does is it slows the back side of the defense down. It slows down the backside linebacker, and it slows down the backside defensive ends. Those are some pretty outstanding athletic players, so if you can slow those guys down a little bit, it does make sense."