Three games into his Tampa Bay Buccaneers career, DeSean Jackson has just nine catches. DeSean being DeSean, those nine catches have gained 143 yards, but he hasn't had quite the impact he and the Bucs might have hoped when they arranged this marriage back in March. He's averaging career-lows in both catch rate and receiving yards per game, after all. 

Jackson does not know why he and quarterback Jameis Winston have yet to really get on track. 

"I wish I had the answer for you," Jackson said, per the Tampa Bay Times. "We're professionals. We're NFL players. We get paid to do a job. We need to go out there and execute the plan... It's only been three games. I hope sooner than later we can connect. I feel like me being a professional in this league, 10 years in, I've been through a lot in my career. But I'm not going to (jump) ship. I'm going to stay on point, stay on plan and I guess eventually it will come together. I've just got to continue to go out there and keep beating, beating away and doing things a little bit better."

Jackson has been one of the best deep ball threats in the NFL since entering the league, if not the best, and the wide expectation was that his presence would help amplify one of Winston's best skills. We wrote this back in August:

Winston however threw deep on only 12 percent of his passes during his first two seasons in the league, and was not especially accurate on those throws.

For the most part, he's had just one receiver truly capable of stretching the field vertically on a consistent basis: Mike Evans. He peppered Evans with a metric ton of targets over the last two years, throwing his way 148 times in 2015 and 173 times in 2016. Of those 321 passes, 73 of them (22.7 percent) were thrown at least 20 yards down the field, according to Pro Football Focus, including a league-leading 39 in 2016. 

Evans turned those deep targets into 21 catches for 630 yards and seven touchdowns. The rest of the Bucs' pass-catchers combined only accounted for 746 yards and nine touchdowns on deep throws at least 20 yards downfield.

Luckily, the Bucs acquired possibly the premier deep-ball specialist in the league this offseason when they signed former Eagles and Washington receiver DeSean Jackson. Jackson has been in the NFL since 2008. In nine seasons, he's led the league in yards per reception three times, and he's racked up 498 catches for 8,819 yards and 46 touchdowns in his career.

Of those 498 catches, 105 came on throws at least 20 yards downfield. Nobody has more catches on such throws since Jackson entered the NFL. Of his 8,819 receiving yards, 4,152 came on throws at least 20 yards downfield. Nobody has more yards on such throws since Jackson entered the NFL. And of his 46 touchdowns, 32 of them came on throws at least 20 yards downfield. Again, nobody has more touchdowns on such throws since Jackson entered the NFL.

Winston has thrown deep downfield only slightly more often in 2017, with 13.9 percent of his passes traveling 20 or more yards in the air. He's been accurate on 40 percent of those throws and has completed only 3 of 9 to Jackson, for 78 yards. 

"I think I've just got to get on track with him," Winston said, per the team's official website. "I have to play better in all respects. He's been doing what he does – he's been open a lot. Again, it's the third game. I don't want to get into a talk about, 'Oh, I'm going to do this. I've got to get D-Jack the ball.' It's obvious I need to get him the ball. He is going to make this team better. At the same time, he's happier with winning than anything else."