For the fourth straight year the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are entering the offseason looking at ways to defend their NFC South title. However, it’s the fifth straight offseason where the Bucs are coming off a year where they’ve come up empty in their pursuit of a Super Bowl, something everyone hopes will be a draught that will have ended by this time next year.
If that’s going to happen, some things will need to change. Last year was another winning season for Tampa Bay but it was one filled with frustrating sputters. A four game losing streak nearly derailed all of the success the team has been having and even though the course was corrected there are massive holes on the roster that need to be filled.
The Bucs addressed some of those in free agency, from bringing back Chris Godwin to signing Haason Reddick to fix a lackluster pass rush. It will take more than offseason moves to take the team to another level, something head coach Todd Bowles very sternly pointed out.
Todd Bowles sends Buccaneers a stern message about ‘killer instinct’
Bowles is usually pretty reserved, especially during the offseason, but he’s wasting no time in lighting a fire under his team.
According to Bowles, it’s on the players to dig deep within themselves to find a ‘killer instinct’, something offseason moves and coaching can only bring them so close to.
"We’ve got to play not even better football at the end, but we’ve got to have killer instinct," Bowles said at the NFL Owners Meeting. "We’ve got to try to blow people out and try to win the division instead of it going down to the last week.”
This is unlikely to win over anyone who is already aligned against Bowles, but thankfully it doesn’t appear any of those folks are in the Buccaneers’ locker room. For as much criticism as Bowles gets from fans — not all of it unjustified — there’s no doubting his influence in rooms where it counts the most.
In back-to-back seasons the Bucs fell into a pit of despair that would have usually swallowed their entire season whole. Instead, the team managed to navigate out of multi-game losing streaks to stil win the NFC South which is a testament to the leadership of Bowles.
He’s spot-on, though, when saying that expecting such a thing to happen each year isn’t a winning strategy. There’s no taking the NFC South titles away from the Bucs, but emphatically winning the division rather than getting lucky breaks is what makes the difference between a true Super Bowl contender and a team that isn’t a cut above.
Tampa Bay has all the ability to be the former, and Bowles challenging his team this early in the season shows just how serious he is about not letting anyone squander the golden opportunity the team has to be special.
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