Todd Bowles called out Jamel Dean for fatal mistake in loss to Falcons in Week 5

A lot of things went wrong for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Thursday night in Atlanta, and fans have spent the last week sifting through it all. The collapse was tough to watch, especially since it felt like a slow moving train of inevitability.

Much of the focus has been on three plays: a missed facemask penalty on Bucky Irving, Lavonte David picking a ball off rather than knocking it down, and Zyon McCollum whiffing on the game-winning play.

A fourth play was just as tough, and might be even worse than all of those.

The whole reason the game got to overtime in the first place was the Falcons' ability to march into field goal range and spike the ball with one second left. It was close to not happening, though, as Drake London caught a pass in the open field with Atlanta not having any timeouts.

That's where Dean's snafu comes into play, and might have cost the Bucs a win.

Todd Bowles called out Jamel Dean for fatal mistake in loss to Falcons in Week 5

After getting tackled, London leapt back up and handed the ball to officials who quickly reset the line and allowed for the game-saving spike. Dean was the one who tackled London, and had he laid on him for even a second there's a decent chance that the clock runs out on the Falcons.

That didn't happen, and Kirk Cousins got the snap off just in time.

It's a play that was tough to judge in the moment, but as the dust settled on everything that went wrong, it stands out as one of the biggest mental mistakes the Bucs made. It's something that Todd Bowles wasn't shy about mentioning, going as far as to call Dean out for not doing the right thing.

“We should’ve laid on them more,” Bowles said after the loss. “We kind of got up and let that second tick off and we should’ve laid on them.”

It was far from the only mistake the Bucs made and it's pretty unfair to blame the loss on Dean. He didn't play great for the other 59 minutes of the game, but neither did anyone in the secondary. When the opposing quarterback finishes with 509 yards passing it's tough to say anyone on the receiving end of that had a good game.

Still, the Bucs nearly held Atlanta off and were tenths of a second away from the outcome being completely different. It was death by a million cuts, though, from Dean not laying on London to Jake Camarda having played his way out of the lineup when the Bucs needed his leg most.

The good news is Tampa Bay is heading into a key matchup against the Saints with something to prove. They answered the bell after an embarassing game against the Broncos a few weeks ago, and here's to hoping the same thing happens after that Thursday night disaster.

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