The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are fresh off losing their third straight game, with all three being against NFC South opponents. And no loss this season is more devastating than this one, because the 23-20 defeat to the Carolina Panthers comes at a time when both franchises are fighting for the NFC South crown, which is the only way either of them will be able to make the playoffs.
Tampa Bay has now lost six of seven games since the bye week, with the lone win coming against Jacoby Brissett and the Arizona Cardinals by the narrowest of margins. Even with star players Bucky Irving, Chris Godwin, and Mike Evans back from injury, the Buccaneers are still on a losing spree.
The Buccaneers wide receivers are the envy of the rest of the NFL, and yet the pair of Todd Bowles and Josh Grizzard mind bogglingly played the worst possible game plan against Carolina, running the ball constantly on first down while completley eschewing any sort of a downfield passing attack.
Todd Bowles got caught being lazy
Bucs reporters rightfully took Bowles to task for totally going against any basic reasoning with this approach against the Panthers, and the head coach's response was far from satisfactory. Bowles replied, via Jenna Laine of ESPN, “We didn’t HAVE to get [30 rushes]. It was a formula that worked last year. Last year we had 41 and 38 rushes against ‘em.”
First of all, what worked last year is not necessarily what will work this year, because, well, things change, such as the Panthers being better in 2025. And to that end, as Laine herself points out, the Panthers had the worst run defense in the league last season in terms of rushing yards surrendered per game and have improved markedly in 2024.
The Panthers are a better team and play better run defense. Instead of adjusting to that and playing to their strengths by throwing the football downfield to playmakers like Godwin, Evans, rookie Emeka Egbuka, and the underrated Jalen McMillan, Bowles played into the Bucs hands because he lazily went with what he knew and what was comfortable from last year.
That pretty much sums up Bowles as a head coach and why the Buccaneers have tuned him out. He is boring, he goes with the vanilla thing he did before, and he never makes adjustments because he is too complacent. And actual good NFL coaches like David Canales know how to take full advantage of that.