Buccaneers player hurt the most by surprise coaching change

How will Buccaneers head coach see Kyle Trask?

In the end, Bruce Arians was able to make the decision to move on from football because Todd Bowles keeps the Buccaneers in a position to win right now.

The Bucs with Tom Brady, a great offensive coordinator in Byron Leftwich, and talented pieces at nearly every position are going to be legitimate playoff contenders fo the next season, but a rebuild is coming.

We all just saw how much losing Brady impacts a team’s hopes. The Bucs have bounced between Super Bowl hopefuls to playoff hopefuls with various announcements from Brady and company, but make no mistake; that day is coming again.

Even if it’s not next year, Todd Bowles will have to go through a rebuild in Tampa. It may not be as dramatic as what he saw in New York, but Bowles has felt the extremes of being a coach in the NFL, and everyone has to start preparing for that.

It seemed like the Buccaneers were trying to do this by drafting Kyle Trask. Pairing him with Arians and Leftwich in an offense that was led by Tom Brady would give him plenty of time to learn from some of the best football minds in the game and ease into the starting role gradually.

With Arians out, Trask’s prospects are slightly complicated.

There are changes coming to the Buccaneers

It seemed like Bruce Arians was coming into this offseason with a chip on his shoulder. Talking about letting Blaine Gabbert start, a prospect that he has leaned on even in his last press conference, reveals plenty about Arians’ mentality.

No risk it, no biscuit.

This level of confidence only comes from coaches who have made it.

Arians was already a lock for the Ring of Honor. Arians has the Super Bowl ring as a head coach, Coach of the Year awards, and the list goes on. His legacy is safe. Why not go out trying to win with one of the worst quarterbacks in the league if his legacy is secure?

Todd Bowles is a different story. While accomplished as a defensive coordinator, Bowles is looking to finally make his mark as a head coach. Expectations are high, and a guy trying to prove that he belongs is not going to hitch his wagon to Blaine Gabbert.

In some ways, the same can be said about Kyle Trask.

Bowles is not a quarterback coach. Every head coach can do something to help their quarterback, but you would be naive to say that Trask will grow more or even as much with Bowles as he did with Arians.

Arians had the skillset to sell the world that Trask could be a starter. Trask may still work, but the journey to making that happen just became more difficult.

To make matters worse, Bowles knows more than most how one quarterback that you aren’t sure about can impact a coach. There were plenty of bad draft picks in New York while Bowles was the head coach for the Jets, and the Sam Darnold one may take the cake as one of the worst.

There were question marks surrounding Darnold. Everyone wasn’t sold on him, and his level of play was a contributing factor in Bowles losing his job.

So yes, Bowles needs to focus on Brady for now and trying to win in year one, but a similar situation exists with Kyle Trask. The staff clearly isn’t sold on him. If they were, the Bucs would’ve stood behind him immediately after Brady retired. This was less than a year after the Buccaneers spent a second round pick to upgrade the depth.

Instead, there was uncertainty. Doubt. Players have overcome these situations in the past to experience great careers, but will Bowles really hitch his wagon to another guy that he isn’t sure about? Seems unlikely.

The truth of the matter is; Trask has one more year to prove that he can start in the NFL. Training camp and the preseason coming off the heels of an Arians team will be the best time to show that everything is there, but new coaches make dramatic changes all the time.

When your job is on the line, you go after your guy. Bruce Arians may have liked Trask but he isn’t the coach any longer. It’s the Todd Bowles show now, and changes are on the horizon to make him feel as comfortable as possible in his new role.

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