A day after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost to the New England Patriots and Baker Mayfield called out himself and his offense, head coach Todd Bowles is not ready to call his team great quite yet.
The loss to the Patriots showcased the Buccaneers' third straight lackluster performance by the offense this season. After starting the game with a successful touchdown drive, Baker and the Bucs cooled down thanks to a lack of execution and struggles on third down. The defense allowed several big plays for touchdowns and didn’t do the little things that made the unit so good going into the bye.
Bucs head coach Todd Bowles got candid when he was asked at his Monday press conference what the difference was between a good team and a great team, and where he thought the Buccaneers stood. In his response, he wasn’t quite ready to give his team the "great label".
“The difference between a good and a great team is preparation on a daily basis,” Bowles said. “I don’t think we’re great. We prepare. Most of the time, we’re very good. It’s just one or two guys that have a blank or a [mental error] here or there that costs everybody else, and it’s a different guy each time, and we’ve got to get that fixed.”
Todd Bowles' brutally honest assessment of the Buccaneers is absolutely spot on
If the goal for the Bucs is still to win a Super Bowl this season, which I assure you it is, they need to find a way to elevate from the very good they are most of the time to great. Fixing mistakes that cost them opportunities on both sides of the ball will be the emphasis this week, and leaders like Lavonte David are already harping on it.
“It hurts,” David said after the game, on giving up multiple big plays. “As a defense, we pride ourselves on things like that, explosive plays; we don’t give that up – pass game, run game, whatever the case may be, and we let some get out today, which is, you know, very uncharacteristic of us. We have to fix it, we got to fix it ASAP before it hurts us in the long run. But the good thing about it is [they’re] not hard fixes, it can be done, and we’ll definitely fix it for sure.”
Bucs safety Tykee Smith called the four explosive plays the defining factors in the game, but says they were routine mistakes that can be easily fixed. The offense, however, has a much bigger problem. Baker Mayfield was very vocal after the loss about his teammates having pride in their job and doing the little things right.
“At some point, when the stuff comes up during the week, whether it’s mistakes or things we talk about and then it shows up on Sundays, you have to have some pride about you,” Baker said. “You [have] to have the fear of that failure and messing up for your teammates when we talk about something, you [have] to have better responsibility and accountability for the guys around you and get it fixed.”
Mayfield took the brunt of the blame but the message was clear there are plenty of things to fix on offense and it’s not just the play on the field. Agreeing with Bowles assessment of the team not being great yet, the quarterback alluded to what could be missing from the Bucs offense to get there in his post game press conference.
“There is a certain point -- we are a good team, but to be great, when you score on the opening drive, you know what it looks like, you set the tone, you’re not satisfied with it. You come back, and in your head, it’s 0-0, and you go do it again. Right now, I think we are lacking that on offense, and it comes down to me -- that is my job to get that fixed, and I will do that.”
Reporters asked Mayfield what he meant by what the team was lacking, and his response was not inspiring.
“Killer instinct,” Mayfield said.
The Bucs offense was a powerhouse last season and now hovers in the middle of the pack or bottom third of the league in most areas. While the defense might have some small things to fix and tweak to get back to the level of play they were achieving prior to the bye week, the offense has many more problems, and it appears they go deeper than talent.
Until both units get it figured out, the Bucs will continue to be a very good but not great team.