We still have three months before the start of the NFL season, but some experts are already confidently predicting how things will go.
Namely, Todd Bowles is apparently already coaching for his job.
Bowles is entering his second year as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach, and it’s already been a bumpy ride. He was sharply criticized for how last season went, and got tossed to the scrap heap this offseason in terms of experts dismissing his role with the team moving forward. Essentially, everyone assumes the Bucs will tank this season and draft Caleb Williams with Bowles obviously being fired at the end of the year.
That’s getting a little ahead of things, but it seemed to be the consensus pre-NFL Draft and hasn’t changed much since. The Bucs haven’t just rejected the idea of tanking, but have been adamant that everyone at One Bucs Place believes the team can compete this upcoming season.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped folks from continuing to assume that circumstances in Tampa Bay make Bowles a lame-duck head coach.
NFL experts place Todd Bowles on the coaching hot seat
Bowles is apparently already feeling the heat, albeit from the outside looking in.
Two publications have already listed Bowles as a head coach on the hot seat. CBSSports.com ran a list of coaches on the hot seat that listed Bowles, as did the folks over at PFF. Those won’t be the last places we see Bowles’ name pop up on such a list, as he’s easy filler for anyone looking for names to add.
It’s also not entirely unfair to think that Bowles is a hot seat candidate heading into the season. The Bucs are coming off a losing season, accidentally making the playoffs by way of an atrocious division. Tampa Bay’s 8-9 record would have made them a third or fourth place team at best in most other divisions last season, and they finished at the 19th-best team in the league.
Yet, despite this the Bucs were NFC South champs and earned a playoff spot.
The optics are what folks are looking at, and it’s fair to look at what a Bucs team with Tom Brady did last year and jump to the conclusion that one without him will be even worse. There’s a degree of justified anxiety stemming from that, especially when thinking about how some of the key mistakes last season weren’t coached properly, but it’s also tremendously shortsighted.
One year shouldn’t define Bowles capabilities to run the team. The role was thrust upon him mid-offseason when Bruce Arians shockingly stepped away, and it was an uphill battle from there. It finally feels like the Bucs are built in Bowles vision, with a revamped coaching staff underneath him.
Dave Canales is a huge hire, and seems to already be making an impact on an otherwise terrible offense from last season. Skip Peete came over from the Dallas Cowboys to improve on the of the worst rushing attacks in recent years, and the NFL Draft was used to hand pick some capital-D Dudes to refresh the roster.
There’s a chance that Bowles bottoms out and ends up fired at the end of another losing season. He’s owed enough credit, though, to assume that the opposite is possible too and this season ends up being as success against what seems to b