The Tampa Bay Buccaneers appear to be in for a 2025 season that looks identical to their 2024 campaign. Baker Mayfield and the offense will conduct one of the more efficient passing games in the league, but Todd Bowles and the defense will let that unit down due to rigidity and poor performance.
Monday Night Football against the Houston Texans crystallized this notion, as the Texans' offense was moving the ball with ease. CJ Stroud is terrific, but it became clear to everyone that he was picking on one Bucs starter for most of the game.
Dennis has been in Houston offensive coordinator Nick Caley's crosshairs all game long. Even with Joe Mixon on the mend, the 1-2 punch of Nick Chubb and rookie Woody Marks ripped off big runs by going right at him and making plays against him as a receiver.
Tampa Bay may have went into the season expecting Dennis to take a step forward and anchor this defense, but the first two games have been so bad that it might warrant Bowles to take a real look at his status as a starting inside linebacker.
Bucs must make obvious decision to bench LB SirVocea Dennis
The options behind Dennis might be equally as bad, as only undrafted free agent John Bullock and a struggling veteran begging to stay in the NFL in Deion Jones are the only inside linebackers behind him on the 53-man roster. However, Monday Night has been a revealing performance in how bad it was.
Dennis is an undersized linebacker at barely 6-0 and 230 pounds on the best of days, meaning that he should be able to make up for his inability to be a tremendous run-stuffer with amazing coverage abilities. The former Pitt star has once again proven to be wholly below average in that area.
One of the big criticisms of the Bowles era has been his inability to make defensive philosophy changes and leaning on players who should not be in the starting lineup for very long. That loyalty may lead to Dennis getting multiple games to work out his issues, which will impact Tampa Bay in the standings.
While benching one player is not going to fix this defense entirely, but Dennis is clearly underperforming, and Bowles likely knows this. If the Bucs end up hitting the skids, Dennis might be one player who sees his playing time chopped down.