The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ red-hot start to the season is in the rearview mirror now. Injuries or not, Todd Bowles’ team has now dropped three of its last four games to fall to 7-6 for the season.
They may have reached a new low with their 24-20 home loss to the struggling New Orleans Saints. And while divisional games are always complicated, this loss shed light on Bowles’s flaws as a head coach.
The Bucs Should Fire Head Coach Todd Bowles
With that in mind, PFSN’s deputy editor Alex Kennedy urged the team to part ways with their defensive-minded head coach:
“The Bucs’ upside is capped with Bowles as head coach. Tampa Bay still controls its own destiny, but this is the same situation the Bucs have found themselves in every year that Bowles has been in charge,” Kennedy wrote.
According to the PFSN offensive metric, the Bucs offense is ranked 26th, and it showed against New Orleans.
The Bucs turned the ball over on downs four times deep into the Saints’ territory. That comes back to haunt you in a four-point loss, and Bowles clearly looked down on his opposition.
Todd Bowles Admits Bucs Need to do Better
Bowles didn’t hide after the game. While he acknowledged that there’s an additional layer of difficulty with all divisional games, the fact of the matter is that they should’ve done better. More than that, they didn’t have to look past the visiting Saints:
“It’s a division game; they always play us tough,” Bowles told the team’s official website. “I said that all week. We don’t look at records. When we play division games, they know us, and we know them. We had plenty of chances to make plays, coaching-wise, offensively, defensively, and special teams, definitely player-wise, offense, defense, and special teams.
“We had situations come up where we didn’t make any plays. We could have made better calls. There are a myriad of things that could have happened for us to lose this ballgame. It doesn’t matter whether the team was 12-0 or 0-12. It’s the NFL; you’ve got to show up and play and make plays or the other team is going to beat you.”
All in all, the NFC South is still theirs to lose. Neither the Saints nor the Atlanta Falcons will pose a threat, but they can both play spoiler.
And with the Carolina Panthers still challenging them for the top spot and a playoff berth, Bowles’ seat could get significantly hotter with each loss in the final stretch of the regular season.
