“I’ve Always Looked Up To Him”
June 24th, 2025
Yes, Todd Bowles has doubters after three consecutive division titles.
They’re not everywhere, but there are enough that Team Glazer might end up commissioning a focus group to figure out why and craft a fix.
(Joe’s available as a consultant, though Joe would have unique compensation demands.)
Bucs players generally seem flummoxeed when confronted with the reality that not all fans are on the Bowles bandwagon.
Peter Blake of The Sports Web advised Antoine Winfield of that phenomenon and asked him how much Bowles means to him and the Tampa Bay locker room.
“A lot. You know, he’s a players’ coach, man,” Winfield replied. “He’s one of those guys that you want to play for. He has experience playing the game and ever since I’ve been here, you know, I’ve always looked up to him and all the advice that he’s given me. So I can’t say enough about what impact he’s had on my career.”
Fans may remember Joe asked Lavonte David the day after January’s playoff loss for his thoughts regarding fan grumbling about Bowles. David adeptly told them to stop “complaining.”
Bucs players do love Bowles. Joe’s question is whether they love him enough to deliver the “killer instinct” Bowles says they must.
June 24th, 2025 at 7:54 pm
Raheem Morris was a players coach too and we saw how that ended in 2011.
June 24th, 2025 at 8:06 pm
The most important factor is that the players love Todd Bowles. Those fans be dawned because currently they have no credibility or qualifications fir such judgment
June 24th, 2025 at 8:15 pm
Cooper kupp and clock management. Honestly think that if giz works out Todd might be the best OC developer. He has talked about coaching the coaches and the proof is in the pudding.
June 24th, 2025 at 8:26 pm
Above ALL, the players love him.
June 24th, 2025 at 8:45 pm
Well, the players on the offensive side of the ball Must Have been “ln Love” with Coen to step up like they SURELY DID last season!
Or is the weight of how much someone “is liked” or even appreciated , the true measure of success and how well an offense or defense will or will not perform?
CLEARLY this question has ALREADY BEEN answered….
I don’t believe that the offense is gonna quit and turn “Sub Par” in a Rebellious show of disobedience because Coen has left! In fact he only had one football playing guy follow him out the door..
It’s nice that Bowles is appreciated for being a “Cool Guy”. HOWEVER, that appreciation IS NOT in any Obvious or Profound measure, demonstrated within the overall performance of the defense.
OR, I’m wrong and the defense is in Even Worse shape than I think? And as well as they have been playing is “Because Of” that appreciation of Bowles being a “players coach”??? Which honestly has been getting worse and worse (Especially in the secondary) since Todd has been promoted to head coach.
Neither sounds very encouraging when looking at the results..
So what is Occams Razor here??? Good luck twisting it around to try to find away where Bowles is some kinda special “defensive” coach. “Special” in Bowles case feels like the type of special that “Rides a Short Bus”.
Problem is that it’s “More Than” just his lack of coaching prowess. He has Also found ways to out wit himself and has Personally lost us games in Every Year he’s been in charge. Good, much less Great Coaches, DON’T PERSONALLY LOSE GAMES!
And Strong, Confident, and Capable Coaches PLAY TO WIN!
He’s going to Have to realize that He’s ACTUALLY GOING TO HAVE TO Coach this Defense UP And He’s HAS TO Finally show off some of those near genius Defensive Packages, and Amazing New Coverages that DO NOT include 300+ lbs lineman foolishly trying to cover TE’s and Receivers! Make it Happen Captain or Walk the Plank..
No Employment Extention is offered in “advance”, and it IS for a Reason ladies and gentlemen.
Occam’s Razor? Friendship isn’t the Best answer… Proper Leadership IS the missing piece to this puzzle. Bowles MUST ENGAGE this year or YES, it maybe his last…
June 24th, 2025 at 9:02 pm
No extension…weird…he’s sooooo good, right?
Why hasn’t he been extended?
LAME-O DUCK-O
June 24th, 2025 at 9:04 pm
GLAZERS LOVE BOWLES!!!!!
UHHHHHH…EXTENSION?
WHAT EXTENSION? Your bad…Joes…why hasn’t he been extended???
Bowles, to the best of Joe’s knowledge, signed a five-year contract with the fifth season a Glazer option. No word whether they exercized the option, or if he’s been extended. ==Joe
June 24th, 2025 at 9:27 pm
The mid-season losing streaks and historically bad pass-defense/secondary certainly don’t help his cause.
June 24th, 2025 at 9:34 pm
Fans are delusional. Him and LICHT have taken what should have been a rebuilding team after Brady left and have continued to win division titles and make the offense better and better and better.
The defense has slowly been adding pieces to the point where this year I fully expect top eight.
The reality is, without Todd Bowles calling the defense, they would have been much worse. He’s had no 4 man pass rush and a ton of injuries in the back half of the defense for the last couple of years. What he’s been able to do with 2nd & 3rd stringers and people off the street is remarkable.
Maybe there were a couple questionable calls at the beginning as head coach but he’s gotten better and better.
And the most important thing is, the players love him and want to play for him. So who cares what the fans think?
June 24th, 2025 at 9:48 pm
The players ALL love and RESPECT the man. That matters.
There only so much a coach can do with inferior athletes and injuries – ask Detroit.
Todd has more talent on defense now…. assuming we have decent luck on the injury front the defense needs to show marked improvements in several areas we’re all aware of.
I think (and predict) it will. Actually, it improved (objectively/statistically) the last half of last year BEFORE we added Reddick, Walker, 2 highly rated CBs, another ILB, got SVD back etc..Some think Todd stinks and and predict our D will suck. I guess we’ll see when the time comes.
Top 10 D, Top 5 offense 🤞🏼
June 24th, 2025 at 10:20 pm
The results say it all. Flat team in important games and against inferior opponents. Defense regression every year. Horrendous in game management , playing not to win. The genius whose players don’t know what they’re supposed to do. The half HC half DC, needs to full time on one and replace the other .
June 24th, 2025 at 11:20 pm
It’s June.
All this chatter is moot when September finally gets here.
June 24th, 2025 at 11:44 pm
Yep. LFG BUCS!! Get after it!!
June 24th, 2025 at 11:51 pm
Big up LVD54!! Completely right!
June 25th, 2025 at 12:29 am
What David says… reread the whole post folks and don’t live in a vacuum.
June 25th, 2025 at 12:49 am
Team is only a reflection of their coach….
Bowels is mediocre and so is the Bucs until they get serious about hiring a winner as HC!
June 25th, 2025 at 5:04 am
It’s not nice to basically tell the people who fork over their hard earned money that they are stupid. Just saying.
June 25th, 2025 at 6:27 am
Todd Bowles was ‘gifted’ a team in Mar 2022 that was at the beginning of undergoing a major transformation. If you look at our current team versus the one that finished the 2021 season, we only have 8 players left from that team (Evans, LVD, Vea, Winfield, Wirfs, Dean, Nelson, Trask). Thus in the 3 years since Todd took over as HC, we’ve replaced 45 players .. 85% of our team. However ‘sloppy’ it might’ve looked at times, we’ve won 3 division championships in the last 3 years, and have developed a 2025 team that most take seriously as a Super Bowl contender.
Be careful what you wish for. Ownership fired Tony Dungy (54-42 with the Bucs in 6 years) because he couldn’t make it to the Super Bowl, and hired Jon Gruden (57-55 with the Bucs in 7 years) who won the Super Bowl in his 1st year here thanks to our #1 defense (Chucky went 45-51 after our 12-4 SB year).
Gruden got fired for the same reason Dungy did, and was replaced by Raheem Morris who went 17-31 in his 3 years, then was let go. He was followed by Greg Schiano who went 11-21 in his 2 years before being fired, followed by Loveable Lovie Smith who in 2 years compiled a modern low of 8-24. Dirk Koetter assumed the reins, but sputtered to a 19-29 record over 3 years.
So from our 2002 SB win through 2018 (16 years) the Bucs went through 5 head coaches, compiled a 100-156 record and made the playoffs only once in that timeframe. When the head honchos fired Tony, we sacrificed a LOT to hire a coach to get us to the SB. We got that (thanks primarily to the defense he was gifted IMO), followed by 16 years in the Den of Depression. Be careful what you wish for.
June 25th, 2025 at 6:59 am
I have a hunch we are going to see a defense this year that looks a whole lot like the 2020 Superbowl defense. More aggressive, less soft coverage, more sacks, more turnovers.
June 25th, 2025 at 7:02 am
“Unique compensation demands”
I don’t think they can force Rachel Watson to do anything like that Joe.
Lol
June 25th, 2025 at 7:06 am
I’m not so much an analytical fan but more an intuitive one. Trust my instincts. But good information drives my gut feeling. Thanks for the food DR. My gut still tells me that Bowles and this group (85 percent Bowles guys-who’d of thunk that) have a lot more in front of them.
June 25th, 2025 at 7:09 am
“”The most important factor is that the players love Todd Bowles. Those fans be dawned because currently they have no credibility or qualifications fir such judgment””
Says YOU. Since when are YOU the credibility and qualification judge of other peoples opinions? And to say the most important factor of Bowles’ HC tenure is that the players love him is moronic. The most important factor? Really?
In case you’ve never heard this before the NFL is a business first and foremost.
I’m not calling for Bowles to be fired. He’s evolved to some degree over the last few years but let’s not pretend that any criticism of him renders somebody unqualified with no credibility.
June 25th, 2025 at 7:15 am
“Yes, Todd Bowles has doubters after three consecutive division titles.”
…in the weakest division in the NFL.
I love you Joe, and we are normally on the same page. But if you are going to use that to prop up Bowles, in needs to be put in context. And one of those “titles” was with a losing record.
June 25th, 2025 at 7:30 am
@DR, you are spot on. The odds of finding the next Sean McVey or Dan Campbell are more likely to result in Matt Eberflus, Love Smith.
The things Bowles is very good at is developing Licht’s draft picks (that is good job security) and hiring OCs.
His conservative approach to coaching is killing him. When the defense is the weak point in the team, you don’t gamble on them to win the game (ie, KC with Mahomes). If you have the 2002 Bucs D, ok fine, but not the 2024 version. But I do not see that changing. It would require an alteration to Todd’s DNA.
June 25th, 2025 at 7:38 am
DR love your stuff. Bucs made playoffs twice (05’ and 07’) in those 16 years of futility. We lost to Redskins 05’ and Giants 07’, both at Ray Jay. The loss to the Skins we held them to 120 total yards and still lost. And 07’ Giants beat Bradys undefeated Pats in the Super Bowl. That Redskins game took years off my life. We held them to 25yds passing! Turnovers killed us that day. It was a Bucs life.
June 25th, 2025 at 7:57 am
I still have nightmares from the Edell Shepherd drop.
June 25th, 2025 at 8:57 am
Aqualung….That was the season they changed that catch rule. Had that happened the year prior, it would have been a TD. Bucs luck again.
June 25th, 2025 at 9:06 am
Colonel Angus … My bad; saw 2005 Wild Card but not the 2007 one. Interesting that in BOTH of those losses we committed 3 turnovers, and they were our undoing. Whodathunkit?
June 25th, 2025 at 9:25 am
I’m not sure if Bowles is a good defensive coach or a bad one, but one thing i am sure about is the defensive players we have had are not very good up to this point. When you couple that with an unreal number of injuries and and lack of draft picks on the defensive side it’s no wonder we have not been good defensively. (it’s still about the Jimmies and Joes.) If we can get the secondary and the edge fixed plus stay somewhat injury free we will find out if Bowles is good or bad.
June 25th, 2025 at 9:35 am
Bowles has been ok I guess. He is certainly no Leeman Bennett or Ray Perkins or even Lovie Smith. He’s no Vince Lombardi either. If you replaced him today there’s a 60-70% chance the new guy would be worse.
June 25th, 2025 at 9:40 am
Senor Harry … ‘But I do not see that changing. It would require an alteration to Todd’s DNA.’
You’re being too hard on Todd ref DNA Harry. He’s more of a ‘mad scientist’ when it comes to defensive schemes & play design, and I think THAT’S what often gets him into trouble. For example, his excessive (and sometimes exotic) blitzing. Too often we leave large segments of the field uncovered because of blitzing, and good OCs figure that out quickly. There seems to be a relationship between large amounts of blitzing and poor pass defense (and not just for the Bucs). It seems to be ‘the cost of doing business’ when the blitz DOESN’T produce any fruit. Also think that he’s over-emphasizing ‘stop the run’, to the degree that it negatively impacts our pass rush. Would like to see us do less blitzing and turn the DLine & OLBs loose in the pass rush more often.
Still, when he’s got the horses, Todd has produced some quality defenses. He basically rebuilt the Secondary in 2019, added Suh & Shaq, and transitioned us from a 4-3 to a 3-4. Our defense went from a #31 ranking in 2018 to a #8 defense in 2020 & a #5 defense in 2021 as we made the playoffs both years & won another Super Bowl. That’s impressive.
Since the start of 2022, we’ve been rebuilding, regardless of what others may call it. We’ve lacked depth on defense IMO, but even that’s much improved this year. I fully expect that our 2025 defense will rank in the Top-10, with us giving up 21 PPG or less. I think it’ll be fascinating to see how this year plays out.
June 25th, 2025 at 9:42 am
Well, damn, Aqualung. I had to look to Wikipedia to even see who Edell Sheppard was. Still don’t actually remember him. Must have been a forgettable guy.
June 25th, 2025 at 10:04 am
DR, turnovers are killers, especially in the playoffs. I’m still scarred from that Redskins game. I was at that one, it was a real dick punch. I looked it up, that was the 6th fewest yards given up in a playoff game and we still lost. Turnovers do matter. And the 5 teams with fewer yards all lost. So we own that record, fewest yards given up in a playoff game loss.