There were a lot of bad moves by the cowardly Buccaneers coaching staff in their loss to the Browns, but one decision stands alone as the worst.
Cowardice and conservative play-calling have no place in the modern NFL. There is a reason why the aggressive approach by Bruce Arians worked so well. There is a reason why the safe play-calling from Todd Bowles and his staff has made the Buccaneers one of the least-exciting teams in the NFL.
Bowles and his staff are not long for their current roles. Most of the assistants have done very well and should get to keep their jobs going forward, but Bowles and Leftwich need to go, and that was seen clearly in their performance today.
While most of the game stood out as hilariously-bad from what we have seen, one play and terrible decision stand alone as the turning point in this game that really made no sense.
Rather than go for it on fourth and two in Cleveland territory, the Bucs instead took a delay of game penalty and punted.
For context, the Cleveland defense has been one of the worst in the NFL this season and hasn’t been able to stop anyone. Even with this in mind, the Bucs took the coward’s approach to hope that their defense could hold in crunch time, and for this reason Tampa deserved to lose the game.
Fourth and two is an obvious ‘go for it’ situation in the vast majority of instances, even when considering most teams average well above five yards per play in the modern game.
The Bucs played it safe when they needed to be aggressive to earn the win, so they earned the loss.
More of this will come with Todd Bowles and Byron Leftwich. For the sake of the Buccaneers and their fanbase, hopefully a change is on its way.
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