Will C.J. Stroud Burn Todd Bowles Again?
September 13th, 2025
Houston QB C.J. Stroud.
This hasn’t happened with regularity. But still, it happens more to Todd Bowles and the Bucs defense more than it should.
Most Bucs fans still feel the stink of Kirk friggin’ Cousins tearing the Bucs apart with 500 yards passing last season in an overtime loss to the Dixie Chicks.
A similar game unfolded the prior season in Houston, this time against a rookie quarterback. In 2023, Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud went wilding on the Bucs defense, throwing for 470 yards with five touchdowns.
Jenna Laine of ESPN types that game, and how badly Stroud gouged the defense in a 30-27 loss, has to be on Bowles’ mind this week. The Bucs play the Texans in Houston on Monday night.
Texans QB C.J. Stroud shredded the Bucs’ defense in Houston during his rookie season in 2023, throwing for 470 yards and five touchdowns. Coach Todd Bowles most certainly hasn’t forgotten that, and if he wants to make a statement on the improvements his defense has made since, it can be on limiting explosive plays. The Texans had the eighth-highest explosive-play rate at 14.4% in 2024, and the Falcons hit the Bucs with a big play early last week.
Joe doesn’t believe it’s fair to compare what the Texans did and what they may do on Monday night. The biggest reason is Houston is so beat up at receiver.
Tank Dell is likely out for the year, still trying to come back from a friendly-fire collision that fully wrecked his knee on a touchdown catch.
Also, Texans starting receiver Christian Kirk hasn’t practiced this week as he is hobbled with a hamstring.
Regardless, the Bucs defense is relatively healthy. They have an edge rusher this year, it appears, with Haason Reddick. And Bowles should not have Stroud on his radar just in case he didn’t have the rookie on his mind two years ago.
Nearly 500 yards passing again Monday night? That should not happen. It better not happen.
September 13th, 2025 at 10:02 am
Yep
September 13th, 2025 at 10:06 am
On paper the Bucs should contain Houston’s offense, but under Bowles, the Bucs defense has allowed mediocre QB to look like HOFs. Play tight coverage and let the front four actually rush the passer, no more cute stuff.
September 13th, 2025 at 10:09 am
That is the bread and butter of a Todd Bowles defense. Give up 400 yards passing a game, but the run defense is so good! The run defense is great because teams can throw for 400+ yards and not have to run the ball.
Even Penix had a career day with 296 yards last week and according to Bijan the offense was confused.
Prediction: Stroud over 500 total yards of offense. Running and passing combined. Todd will be asleep by 9:00pm as usual for a night game. Jamal Dean will be “injured” after getting toasted for a long gain.
September 13th, 2025 at 10:19 am
He has the worst O line imaginable. If he torches us then there is something seriously wrong with this defense.
September 13th, 2025 at 10:27 am
Beat HOUSTON! Win whatever way possible.
September 13th, 2025 at 10:27 am
The final score was 39-37 in 2023 when Stroud went nuts on us. We’re alot better now.
September 13th, 2025 at 10:31 am
Is it me or does anyone else notice Bowles defenses may give up a lot of passing yards but when the game ends the other team scores 23 or less more times than not, I’m not a fan of Bowles, but he’s either lucky or good
September 13th, 2025 at 10:43 am
“Houston is so beat up at receiver.”
The Bucs are also beat up at receiver (McMillan and Godwin), but the rookie receiver sure came through big time against Atlanta. It can happen!
September 13th, 2025 at 10:48 am
Honestly, Todd Bowles doesn’t lose twice to any team often he usually fixes the problems
September 13th, 2025 at 11:17 am
The pressure will be on the pass defense because Houston won’t run against this defense. Need to see an interception or two and of course some sacks would be great.
Anyone notice Diaby’s sack that was called back on the facemask penalty by Dean? YaYa flew through that line. We’d still be talking about it today if not for that penalty.
September 13th, 2025 at 11:26 am
Nobody mentions it, but Yaya also had a sack last game that was called back by a stupid penalty on someone else on our D.
Yaya had a better game than Reddick if his sack wasn’t negated.
September 13th, 2025 at 11:40 am
I thought that the Bucs defense did well against Atlanta and their pass catchers except Dennis and his poor angles.
What Pennix got 300 yards on 42 pass attempts? You take out the 100 yards that Dennis gifted to Atlanta — that’s 200 yards on 40 attempts and 3 missed interceptions on top of that.
I’d take all year giving up 200 yards passing on 40 attempts and think most of the time that we will get at least 1 interception.
But that is a glass half full on the defense overall (except of course my continued criticism of Dennis).
September 13th, 2025 at 11:42 am
definitely start Nico in your FF leagues
September 13th, 2025 at 12:03 pm
If we double Nico all game, we will win.
September 13th, 2025 at 12:11 pm
Guzzie55 … ‘Is it me or does anyone else notice Bowles defenses may give up a lot of passing yards but when the game ends the other team scores 23 or less more times than not.’
Interesting observation Guzzie; got me curious. We’ve had 100 regular season games since Todd Bowles became our DC in 2019. Of those 100 games, Bucs defense gave up 23 points or less in 55 games (55% success rate?) as shown:
o 2019: 5 games giving up 23 pts or less … 7 wins-9 losses
o 2020: 9 games … 11 wins – 5 losses
o 2021: 9 games … 13 wins – 4 losses
o 2022: 11 games … 8 wins – 9 losses
o 2023: 11 games … 9 wins – 8 losses
o 2024: 10 games … 10 wins – 7 losses
BTW Guzzie, our record in those 55 games is 44 wins – 11 losses, equating to an 80% win rate, roughly 13-14 wins on a season. I’d take that any day. The worst record of those 3 years (2022) also coincided with us having the worst offense we’ve had in those 3 years. With Baker at the helm, our offense has put up 20.5 PPG average in 2023 (9-8 record) and 29.5 PPG average in 2024 (10-7 record). I personally don’t expect to see us put up much more than 25 PPG average this year, but if our defense holds up that should be plenty good to win the division & do some damage in the playoffs.
What strikes me about those numbers is that our defense has been fairly consistent over the past 3 seasons in terms of giving up that 23 points or less you mentioned.
September 13th, 2025 at 12:14 pm
@Guzzie
We allowed > 23 points in only 7 games last season. We went 1-6 in those 7 games and our offense committed 13 of our 23 giveaways in 6 of those 7 games.
The 11 games we held opponents to 23 or less ppg we went 9-2 with losses being to SF & Washington(wildcard). 7 of those 11 games we held opponents under 20 points, all wins. 10 of our 23 turnovers on offense also happened in 7 of those 11 of those games.
Could just be you, but I think you’re making a pretty solid observation.
September 13th, 2025 at 12:18 pm
I think we’ll be hovering around 30 once we get all our receivers and Wirfs back. One can only hope…
September 13th, 2025 at 12:18 pm
geno711 … I’m not a big fan of SVD’s at this point either, but he may be the best we’ve got. SVD was targeted 6 times in the Atlanta game, and allowed 6 completions for 116 yards. What frustrated me is that the Air Yards was only 12 yds total, and the YAC was 104 yds total.
Bucs had 5 missed tackles on the day according to Pro-Football-Reference’s advanced stats … SVD had 3 of those 5 missed tackles. Kinda goes hand-in-hand?
September 13th, 2025 at 12:21 pm
All the stats are great. But they do not comfort me a bit if the Bucs 2 starting Tackles are out. Hopefully Luke plays, it is huge.
GO BUCS!!!
September 13th, 2025 at 12:21 pm
Stpetematt … I hope you’re right. Makes winning quite a bit easier.
September 13th, 2025 at 12:37 pm
Texans beat the Bucs 39-37 after Baker pulled a heroic go ahead TD out of his hind end with 45 seconds left. Couldn’t even kee a rookie out of the end zone in crunch time.
CJ could be throwing to a group of oil rig workers and torch the genius.
Better produce a 40 burger, Baker. Have your feet right from the first drive.
September 13th, 2025 at 12:41 pm
Patients fellow fans. We are warming up. The preseason for our starters was some what of a vacation. We need the next 3 games to get in attack mode shape. I want to see our running game get back on track.
Let coach Carberry tweak the scheme to benefit our temporary Oline. Also, Grizz is adapting to our temporary Oline.
But above all Baker must become much sharper with his game. He can help the team the most until the offense gels.
1-0
LFG!!!
September 13th, 2025 at 12:48 pm
Until this defense gets a legitimate pass rush an inconsistent defense where QBs look like HOFers will continue. QBs are not afraid to play the Bucs. Unlikely to get sacked in critical situations, and can throw the ball with very little risk of being intercepted. Half the time they get hit, itll be a late hit penalty helping them in the end.
September 13th, 2025 at 12:49 pm
If Todd Bowles plays less soft D especially when the Buc’s have a lead, they can limit the yardage. Our offense needs to step up especially the run game too. Control the clock! Win the game!
September 13th, 2025 at 1:10 pm
IMO…BUCS defense will not be a weakness vs Texans. Expect the defense to play tough similar to our week two game vs Det last year.
Winfield playing well/healthy plus upgraded talent & depth at all levels of defense. We are certainly better than last year and it showed in Atlanta.
I am more concerned with BUCS current offense being able to score more than 21 pts against that Texan defense. The truth is most of us had this game counted as a loss when we looked at the schedule release. Even @11-5 this game was 1 of the 5 losses for most bets & that was before Wirfs was out.
I am just hoping that we get out of there MN with Baker healthy. Texans D ain’t no joke. Like the under in the 1st half. Plus we Beat Atlanta, playing percentages it would be more than possible to have a let down especially early in the game. Hope I’m wrong but we are not at full strength. Next month will be a different story.
GO BUCS!
September 13th, 2025 at 2:16 pm
My wish is some of these negative yahoos be forced fed watching the 1983-95 Bucs games. That’s losing, you idiots!! You got the cajones? This franchise is not even close to how bad those were. Not sure if Joe was even alive back then. Some of the losing records Bucs set back then still haven’t been equaled. Sure, this Texan game will be another dawg fight plus refs. So what? This Bucs team brings their B+ game, we go to 2-0. That’s what matters.
September 13th, 2025 at 2:38 pm
I am glad you are optimistic, orlbucfan, I too expect us to have another win. We bring a different defense to a different Texan team. Times are great to be a Buccaneer fan.
Go Bucs!!
September 13th, 2025 at 2:47 pm
Joe indirectly won us the opener with his opening draft choice. His incessant moaning about our night game performances may be that indirect link that pulls us out the victory on Monday night. We saw you question Baker specifically about what could be done about that shortcoming. That question appeared to pi$$ old Bake off just a little bit Joe. Bravo!! He plays better that way. Just make sure when you hit him with those critical queries that you aren’t in arms reach. Just sayin.
September 13th, 2025 at 2:52 pm
Aqualung … ‘Better produce a 40 burger, Baker.’
OK I’ll play … ain’t gonna happen. Texans overhauled their defense (it’s now the most expensive in the NFL) & it did VERY well against the Rams last week, holding them to 2 TDs (14 points total). Texans still lost, but not because of their defense.
Rams ran the ball on almost 45% of their plays … 25 runs for only 72 yards total (2.9 YPC). Stafford went 21-of-29 for 245 passing yards (72.4%), but was sacked 3 times (lost 21 yds there). Stafford was 5-of-6 for 128 yards deep however (none of those deep completions led directly to TDs, but 2 of them did keep drives alive that ended up in TDs).
Tells me that we may very well have trouble again running the ball, but that we might find something to work with in the deep passing game. Short passing game though will still be our bread & butter. Defensively containing Stroud is a priority (last season he ran 52 times for 233 yds, an average of 4.5 YPC). Not THE most mobile QB, but mobile enough.