All Eyes Are On The Defense
July 4th, 2025
Bucs coach Todd Bowles.
Yesterday, Joe read a commenter on this here corner of the interwebs ask a very good question.
Last year, the Bucs were ravaged by injuries in the secondary and at inside linebacker. It led to the Bucs playing Antoine Winfield when his play had dropped off so much from his normal self, Joe has wondered aloud several times that maybe Winfield shouldn’t have been on the field.
The commenter in question stated (Joe is paraphrasing) the offense had a bunch of injuries, too, yet Liam Coen still produced.
That’s a fair point. Very fair. For three games, the Bucs were without their two Hall of Fame/Pro Bowl receivers. Granted, the Bucs lost all three but it wasn’t like the offense collapsed. Each game was a one-score losses. A
ll three were lost, in large part, because the Bucs either couldn’t get a stop late in the fourth quarter or in overtime.
Sense a pattern?
In Warren Sharp’s Sharp Football Analysis 2025 Preview, Sharp said all eyes are on the Bucs defense this fall.
The Bucs dropped from #12 to #25 in touchdowns allowed per drive, they dropped from #8 to #25 in turnovers forced per drive, and they consequently dropped from #11 to #18 in points allowed per drive.
Tampa is playing a slightly more difficult schedule of offenses in 2025, so they must improve tremendously on that side of the ball.
Doing a modicum of research this week, Joe was stunned to re-discover that, except for one season (2022), the Bucs have been in the bottom-third of the league in passing yards allowed per game. Three separate times the Bucs ranked No. 29 in passing yards allowed, including the last past seasons.
So yeah, Joe agrees. The defense better improve with new additions to every level.
And it would also go a long way if SirVocea Dennis and Jamel Dean can stay on the field. Those two have missed a combined 26 games the past two seasons. Not good.
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July 4th, 2025 at 6:37 am
Defense returns to top 10 status (was #16 last year in the only defensive stat that REALLY matters – points against) and offense remains top 5 = 11+ wins and poised to make a deep playoff run……
July 4th, 2025 at 6:44 am
The defense has to be better this year. We’ve been bad at pass defense for 2 reasons.
1. Our defense is primarily set up to stop the run.
2. The players and coaching scheme have not been good enough.
Also, before we just say that the offense is good even when we have injuries, it appears that when both Evans and Godwin were both out – we averaged 310 yards per game. When at least one of them were on the field, the Bucs averaged 418 yards per game. And more importantly, we lost all three games they were both out.
July 4th, 2025 at 7:00 am
Please Please let’s stop with this JDean need to stay on the field. Injured or not, he’s at the threshold of mediocre. He’s a dud who drop potential ints on critical downs, is a passive tackler, often gets juked, is slow to react, is extremely poor at tracking the bal, n to this day, seems confused on where to line up on certain plays despite 7yrs in the league. I’m so done with this guy in the same manner I was with OJ Howard, Jayden Darden, JTS, n Scotty Miller.
July 4th, 2025 at 7:17 am
Bowles is old school: Always, ALWAYS, stop the run first. The league has changed, maybe that’s not the way to do it anymore, and he hasn’t noticed?
July 4th, 2025 at 7:18 am
IMO Dean better than Howard, Darden, JTS, and Miller.
However, would love for him to be involved in a trade for Trey Hendrickson!
July 4th, 2025 at 7:42 am
I’m with Pickgrin.
All that matters is points scored against this defense.
When a team focuses primarily on stopping the run, they’re going to give up more yards in the passing game automatically. Not allowing teams to score as much against us, that is the key. Getting those third down stops and forcing more turnovers is huge this year. Do we have the horses to do it? I think so.
July 4th, 2025 at 8:18 am
While I agree that keeping an opponent from scoring is the primary goal; letting them use up entire quarters driving up and down the field is not great either. The Commanders had a 15 play drive and an 11 play drive to start the game. The defense had a couple of late stops, but not nearly enough. The field position game was too much to recover from.
July 4th, 2025 at 8:46 am
Uh oh. Expecting a coach to perform through adversity that every other coach also has to perform through seems to be a no no for Bowls. His fan boys really really hate when you hold him accountable without offering excuse after excuse for his terrible rotten no good lousy defense.
July 4th, 2025 at 8:51 am
Run stop defense.
League is all passing offenses.
Bucs better evolve. Stagnation is death.
July 4th, 2025 at 8:52 am
we just have to play complementary football….
if the defense is lacking, offense needs to run the ball, chew up the clock and protect the football(limit INTs & Fumbles)
if the offense isnt playing well, defense needs to flip the field, limit penalties, and take the ball away(punts or turnovers)
simple as that!!!!
GO BUCS!!!!
July 4th, 2025 at 9:07 am
Beej … ‘Bowles is old school: Always, ALWAYS, stop the run first. The league has changed, maybe that’s not the way to do it anymore, and he hasn’t noticed?’
I agree Beej: Todd Bowles is ‘old school’. Our Bucs had the #16 defense in terms of Points Allowed (our worst showing since 2019 when Bowles arrived here). We had the #29 Pass Defense with 4147 Passing Yards Allowed (which obviously drove Joe to drink), but we had the #4 Run Defense with 1663 Rushing Yards Allowed.
But the same could surely be said about the Vikings’ and their DC, Brian Flores. Their Pass Defense ranked #28, with 4114 Passing Yards Allowed, but their Run Defense ranked #2, with only 1588 Rushing Yards Allowed. Similar results, except that the Vikings defense ranked #5 in the NFL, 11 places better than our #16 ranking. And they finished with a 14-3 record (but got clubbed by the Rams in the 1st playoff game, 27-9). So they also focused on stopping the run like we did, their pass defense was no better than ours, yet they finished with the #5 overall defense. Hmmm, MAYBE there’s more to the story than just Pass Defense & Run Defense.
Actually there were several areas where Minnesota’s defense performed significantly better than ours, despite those similarities. For one thing, the Vikings made 33 takeaways altogether last season … 24 INTs & 9 FRs. Compare that to our 18 takeaways last season … 7 INTs & 11 FRs. Huge difference. Vikings won the Turnover Battle in 8 games; Bucs won it in only 4 games.
Another significant difference lies in stopping 3rd & 4th down conversion attempts. Vikings only allowed 35.6% of 3rd down conversion attempts to succeed (ranked #4), while our Bucs allowed 38.1% to succeed (ranked #14). But it’s on the 4th down conversion attempts that the Vikings really blew us away. They only allowed 13-of-35 to succeed (37.1% for a #1 ranking). The Bucs on the other hand allowed 19-of-30 to succeed (63.3% for a #23 ranking).
Considering their advantages in those 2 stats … takeaways & 3rd/4th down conversions … that’s a big reason why the Vikings’ defense ranked #5 (allowing only 332 points), while our defense ranked #16 (allowing 385 points). And those are 2 areas that we REALLY need to improve in this year.
July 4th, 2025 at 9:08 am
The only stat that matters is where are you ranked in scoring defense yards don’t mean nothing. People forget about the Patriots defense because the meadi gave all the credit to Brady and if you bring up their defense then that means you hate Brady so people ignored it. But the Patriots defense was always ranked top 5 in scoring because they didn’t give many points. They would give passing yards and rushing yards but they didn’t give up points. Go see each year they were in the Superbowl how many times teams scored 30 points against their defense.
July 4th, 2025 at 9:25 am
…and they the failed DC is rewarded with a contract extension. Yeeeesh!
July 4th, 2025 at 9:28 am
All you have to do is look at where the team has talent – offense. How many undrafted free agents are we starting on offense. The talent holes on defense have been wide and deep since the SB. We’ve weathered the ensuing salary cap hell with the majority of emphasis on Offense. Yup, there have been busts on D – JTS – and guys that dumped on us – D. White, J. Whitehead round II.
Yet with the greatest weaknesses being on D, we go WR in the draft. I’m sure EE will be great. But RD1 should be a Pro Bowl caliber player (when the Pro Bowl meant something) and we make the pick on O.
The two teams that crushed KC in the SB have been the Bucs and Eagles. Both did it with DEFENSE.
July 4th, 2025 at 9:35 am
It is worth repeating: “Doing a modicum of research this week, Joe was stunned to re-discover that, except for one season (2022), the Bucs have been in the bottom-third of the league in passing yards allowed per game. Three separate times the Bucs ranked No. 29 in passing yards allowed, including the last past seasons.” Joe’s words!
So, under Bowles, 1 out of 6 years the pass “D” is NOT in the bottom 3rd of the league! That sounds like the system is the problem more than the players, no? Even when we had pass-rushers (JPP, Barrett), strong interior (Vita, Suh, Gholston, Hicks), good to great LBs (LVD, DW, when he cared), & above average back-end (Winfield, Davis, Dean, saftey, Revis’ cousin who went to Jets & returned last year, safety from KY who left then returned last year, names escape me now) the “D” still ranked in the bottom 3rd of the league!? That is defensive genius stuff right there!?
Last year the offense missed:
Goedeke. 2-3 games,
Wirfs 1-2 games,
rookie center 1 game,
Starting LG 1-2 games,
RB White 1 game,
Evans 3 games,
Godwin 9-10 games. (Did I miss anyone?)
and remained ALL year & finished in the top 5! Sounds like a good system & good play calling, no? But BBB, the culture! The wrong coordinator left.
Thanks Bucinjim, if your high-powered “O” is on the bench, they are rendered powerless!
Bowles
Rated
July 4th, 2025 at 9:46 am
I need to mark this day. It is the most I have ever agreed with ONeilbuc!!!
FrontFour – To me lots of ways to win and win the Super Bowl. I do remember Sean Payton saying he felt really good about the Bucs style of defense in the Super Bowl, and it gave them an excellent chance to win against KC. He seemed convinced that Bowles would not let any explosive plays happen by KC in the Super Bowl and he turned out correct.
The same thing that fans complain about in the Washington playoff game for our defensive strategy worked against KC in the Super Bowl. Sometimes game by game matchups do work in the ways you want them to and sometimes they do not.
It’s what I love about pro football. Not just a singular way to get there.
July 4th, 2025 at 9:57 am
The apologists and excuse makers are out in droves.
Points allowed and yards allowed correlate very strongly over time. When they don’t, it’s an anomaly, not some magic button that a part-time coordinator pushes. Last season the chickens came home to roost, a reversion to the statistical mean. Any team needing just a FG to win or tie in the 4th quarter simply carves up the Bucs soft underbelly like a 4th of July tenderloin.
Todd’s pass defense sucks. Has sucked.
Will it suck in 2025?
July 4th, 2025 at 9:59 am
PS even Bryce Young could do it. Thank you Anthony Nelson. You saved Todd’s job and the Bucs season temporarily.
July 4th, 2025 at 10:44 am
No No No bucs fans you got it all wrong.
“Look over here, we won the south again!! Nothing wrong with the defensive coaching whatever do you mean!!!??”
July 4th, 2025 at 10:51 am
I’M SO PUMPED FOR OUR NEW DEFENSE
Here’s the good news. NO … THE GREAT NEWS. Bowles coaches all observed the same thing. They acknowledged the pass defense was attrotious and needed changes.
They locked themsleves in a room for days and days with the goal of fixing the defense.
1. Discovered the problems.
2. Analyzed options.
3. Built a new scheme.
You remember the last HC and DC to create a new scheme. It was Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin. They created the Tampa 2. Here comes the Tampa v3?
July 4th, 2025 at 10:57 am
Passing yards allowed ranking doesn’t always equate to a successful team. The bottom 6 teams in 2024 were Jaguars, Ravens, Bucs, Vikings, Lions. Only the Jaguars missed the playoffs. The team that allowed the least amount of passing yards was the Titans, and they just had the first pick in the draft.
Teams with good offenses (The playoff teams mentioned above) are more likely to force the opposing team to pass, therefore increasing the attempts and likelihood of higher yardage.
When looking at yards per attempt given up, the Bucs were middle of the pack but near other playoff teams (Bills, Chiefs, Vikings, Ravens, Lions).
When looking at TDs given up, the Bucs were slightly worse than middle of the pack but were within +/- 2 TDs of other playoff teams (Commanders, Ravens, Bills, Rams).
Interception ranking was bleak but tied with the Commanders.
The passer rating was in the bottom 1/3 of the league and the worst among all playoff teams (the Rams were close).
That being said, out of Pass Offense, Rush Offense, Pass Defense, Rush Defense, and Special Teams. The passing D was clearly the weak link on the Bucs and even modest improvement (with no major regression on the other units) would put the Bucs into the elite team echelon.
July 4th, 2025 at 11:55 am
‘the offense had a bunch of injuries, too, yet Liam Coen still produced.’
And that is what exposed Bowels as a poor DC!…
Liam (as a newby OC) coached the talent he had and still had success…
Bowels (with all his years experience) showed he has to have the best players or his side falls apart… Not good at coaching to where he can coach up the 2nd string….
Hoping the next Bucs HC is coming SOON and is a modern OC with great success!
July 4th, 2025 at 12:27 pm
Nicely framed Bucsbeback. Just seems “Obvious” doesn’t it.
What I’m trying to wrap my head around is where.is Jason Licht in this? I guess THAT’S the advantage of being the “Man behind the Curtain” . He has the luxury of letting Todd Bowles take all the heat. And because of Todd’s Choices he deserves it.
BUT… to be Perfectly Honest….. Jason Licht is Ultimately Responsible for Todd Bowles! “Jason Licht” IS responsible for No Full Time DC……!
I’d LOVE to be a fly on the wall when he bends the knee and kisses the ring and has to EXPLAIN the LOUSY Defensive circumstances.. It seems he’s selling magic beans to the Glazers for their $ CASH COW $! Obviously he’s got them a bit hoodwinked and drunk on very small doses of nfc south “barely” titles…..
Got to give Jason credit… He one he!! Of a salesman!