Todd Bowles comments on multiple missed calls by officials in Week 3
By Josh Hill
It was truly a case of 'when it rains it pours' in Tampa on Monday night, both figuratively and litereally.
Late in the second quarter, the skies opened up to downpour on Raymond James Stadium, something that likely played a factor in Baker Mayfield throwing his first interception of the season. The weather didn't play a role in every mistake, as Mike Evans dropped a touchdown pass, the run game never got going, and Devin White's groin injury prevented him from potentially returning a pick-six.
All of those moments were momentum-shifters, except instead of breaking the Bucs way it moved away from them.
Something else that was persistent throughout the night was bad officiating. Multiple calls appeared to be missed, including a pretty blatant hold on Greg Gaines during a Jalen Hurts touchdown pass. Philadelphia also appeared to be getting early movement all night, something that went mostly unpeanalized and helped keep key drives for the Eagles going.
More than just bad officiating contributed to the Bucs 25-11 loss on Monday, but it certainly didn't help keep the scales balanced. Head coach Todd Bowles kept his cool during the fiasco but commented on the missed calls on Tuesday morning.
Todd Bowles laughs off multiple missed calls by referees in Week 3 loss
Bowles spoke to the media the morning after the loss and commented on all of the non-calls on Philly's early movement.
He didn't let officials off the hook for not throwing flags, but Bowles didn't take the easy way out either. He made sure to not let the bad calls be an excuse for why the Bucs played so poorly at every other level of the game.
"They've seemed to be letting it go," Bowles said. "We've got to come off the ball nevertheless. Sometimes the eye sees things and they say it takes a second or a half a second to click. What we see, we have to start correcting that somewhere along the line and make sure it doesn't get out of hand."
While Bowles didn't let the missed calls be an excuse, he didn't ignore their impact on the game. He remained calm, but Bowles let it be known he wasn't pleased.
"I'll leave that to the league. That's all we can do about it. We can try to make them look a little closer," Bowles said. "They have to call it for it to be effective."
Early movement has been a huge talking point so far this season. It started in the first game of the season when everyone was watching Jawaan Taylor get an early start without being flagged, but goes all the way back to last season as well. Lane Johnson, who was a source of frustration on missed calls last night, was highlighted by fans during the Super Bowl for doing the same thing.
It's a league-wide problem, one that officials were told after the first week to keep an eye on. It's clear that's still a work in progress, but Todd Bowles taking the high road and not blaming officials was the right move.
The many, many missed calls didn't help but the Bucs have plenty of other things to work on instead of blaming things that are out of their control.