4 Buccaneers who deserve blame for embarrassing 41-31 loss on Monday Night Football

Monday night was a total nightmare for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Not only did they fail to measure up in a game against a Super Bowl-caliber team, but the Bucs might have lost both Mike Evans and Chris Godwin for the foreseeable future.

Evans exited in the first half after reaggravating his hamstring injury, but it's unclear how much time he might miss. Without a doubt, the worst loss of the night was Chris Godwin, who suffered what the team believes is a dislocated ankle and is likely out for the rest of the season.

Nothing went right for the Bucs, yet somehow they stormed back to be within 10 points at the end of the game. Everyone is dissecting the decision to have starters on the field with under a minute left in a game where the odds of winning weren't great -- even though they weren't zero -- but that shouldn't overshadow some of the awful mistakes that were made in the 58 minutes prior.

Buccaneers who deserve blame for embarrassing loss on Monday Night Football

Todd Bowles

Already a lightning rod for fan frustration, Bowles pulled off a masterclass even by his standards on Monday night. While emotions are hot in the aftermath of the Chris Godwin injury, that's not even remotely close to the thing Bowles should be blamed for.

Monday night might have been the worst defensive performance we've seen out of Tampa Bay since Bowles arrived. Everything went wrong, from blown coverages that left Mark Andrews wide open, to mistakes that led to huge plays from Baltimore that kept the Bucs from being able to stay within reach.

If anything, Bowles should wear the blame for the circumstances that led to Godwin being in the game when he was injured, not the fact that he was on the field. Somehow, the Bucs were in a position to win -- being down 10 points with time left is not garbage time -- but it's the poor play of Bowles' defense that helped lead to the situation in the first place.

Defensive Line Rotations

Digging deeper into Bowles' bad night, the defensive line rotations were a total mess. There were plays where Greg Gaines, Logan Hall, and Anthony Nelson seemingly had no clue what they were doing and it showed in the way Baltimore ran all over them.

It's one thing to go up against Lamar Jackson, but it's another to do it with the bad rotations the Bucs used. There was a little pass rush at various points but nothing nearly as consistent as a team needs to actually get home on Jackson.

This speaks to a depth issue more than anything else, as it's not the first time those guys have come up this season on the wrong side of a gnarly post-mortem.

Baker Mayfield

Ultimately Baker turned in another statistically impressive night. He finished with 370 yards and three touchdowns, which is on par for what Baker has done so far this season. It's the two interceptions and the context in which they happened that start to sour the narrative a bit.

Baker's first interception came in the endzone on a pass he should have never thrown. He had ample time to throw the ball away or seemingly enough green in front of him to make a run for the goal line. Instead, Baker sent the ball right into the waiting arms of Marlon Humphrey.

That pick spoiled what was going to be a scoring drive one way or another, and the second one was even worse than the first. Humphrey intercepted him again on a pass that Baker forced into double coverage. He came out of the night looking better on the stat sheet than he did on the field, as those two early turnovers changed the entire tone of the game as Baltimore scored off both and put Tampa Bay behind the eight ball.

Jordan Whitehead

There's no nice way to put it, Monday was an unmitigated dumpster fire of a night for Jordan Whitehead.

He was supposed to be in coverage with Zyon McCollum on a 59-yard catch by Rashod Bateman, but that clearly didn't happen. Somehow that wasn't the lowest point of Whitehead's night, as he played the Ryan Neal role of seemingly always being in the vicinity of a broken play on defense. He was standing around when Mark Andrew caught almost all of his wide-open passes -- including a touchdown -- and seemed to

Whitehead's low point was when he seemingly made a business decision by giving up on a tackle on Derrick Henry late in the game.

It was a night full of bad tackling, poor coverage, and generally bad stuff from a guy the Bucs were relying on to be a veteran difference-maker on defense.

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