Defense (Mostly) Came To Play
October 21st, 2025
Defense was ready.
Baker Mayfield wasn’t making any excuses Monday night on the Buccaneers Radio Network.
“I don’t even want to see our third-down percentage,” Mayfield said. “That was horrible.”
Mayfield isn’t wrong, but there is a caveat to the truth.
The Bucs converted just 4-of-16 third downs against the Lions. So yeah, Mayfield was right.
But you know what? The Lions were even worse.
The Bucs defense held the Lions to just 3-of-13 third-down conversions. That’s 23 percent.
Did the defense give up big plays? It sure did. But the Bucs offense didn’t hold up its end of the bargain. At all.
Despite the Lions seemingly pounding the Bucs, Detroit only had a 14-3 lead at halftime. The Bucs defense held them to 24 points.
Yes, Joe knows the Lions are good. Very good. But man, when you hold any team on the road to 24 points, you not only should be in the game, but you should be in a damn good position to win the game.
The Bucs’ offense p!ssed down their legs.
So props to the defense for keeping the Bucs somewhat in the game until the final minutes. In this loss, the offense simply was not ready and had few answers to Detroit’s physical style.
October 21st, 2025 at 12:05 am
Agree joe
We’ll bounce back
GO BUCS
October 21st, 2025 at 12:10 am
The Defense was the only reason the Bucs didn’t get blown outta Detroit…..
The Lions are a Superbowl team for sure
October 21st, 2025 at 12:14 am
Mostly. Like, almost not pregnant.
Obligatory first opposing drive touchdown. Check.
Todd’s “stop the run” defense letting Gibbs run wild. Check.
SirSucksalot Dennis being allowed on the field at all, making gaffe after gaffe, no improvement demonstrated and Todd does nothing. Check.
Pornstache Goon nearly getting Baker killed and rattling Baker off his game so much any hope was lost. Check.
Upon further review, and even with an even more incompetent officiating game than has been seen since Atlanta, the defense is not the reason the Bucs lost. The defense could have given up 12. The Bucs weren’t ever scoring more than 9. That’s pitiful.
The Bucs have a rookie play caller calling his 7th game. A real head coach might sit with him and work with him. Help him. Especially knowing how decimated the Lions DBs were. Maybe since Baker had no time and was so obviously off his long ball, adjusting to some creative intermediate routes using the twitchiness of the Johnsons might have been in order,
Good head coaching matters. We don’t have a head coach. We have three coordinators. At least one of them molests a farm animal every game.
Welcome to the 2025 swoon.
October 21st, 2025 at 12:16 am
PS – can someone hand out barf bags when a cheerleader has the nerve to waive her Pom Poms after that atrocity?
October 21st, 2025 at 12:16 am
A solid pass rush vs a depleted O-line will have that affect. Better preparation and play calling will help.
October 21st, 2025 at 12:29 am
100% agree. With all the injuries to the Lions secondary, holding a team that averages 29 a game to 9 points really shows how their D was ready to go!
October 21st, 2025 at 12:39 am
Rather how poorly prepared and even more poorly coached the Bucs offense was.
October 21st, 2025 at 12:50 am
All this MPV hype for Mayfield should be put to rest. He played his worst under the big lights of a national television broadcast.
October 21st, 2025 at 12:53 am
But the question: Is Todd Bowles worth the opportunity cost of losing our OC every year?
The offense has to constantly hit the reset button. Each season it’s a new system and new terminology to learn – all because management is adamant about keeping our 61 yr old coach and his middling defense in place.
Not hard to imagine this offensive would be more impressive if it had 6 years to learn, improve, evolve like our 24th-ranked defense has had.
October 21st, 2025 at 12:57 am
This offensive coordinator Grizzard is no Liam Cohen. There is no creativity in the offense game plan.
October 21st, 2025 at 1:05 am
Agreed, hard not to agree if you watched the game.
Tough to watch all those chunk gains out of Gibbs and St.Brown, especially on the first drive. Dennis… wow. Come on though, how do you still have him in that position!? Plays are scripted on first drive so tougher to shut down, ok, take away their best players.
That’s 6 plays.
The offense was bad for 36 plays.
October 21st, 2025 at 1:30 am
I think Aqualung makes a great point about Coach Bowles. He may hold players accountable behind the scenes by calling out horrendous play in the film room or during team meetings but he never, ever seems to take action. He just lets the same culprits miss tackles and give tge opponent second lives so many time. Players still make crucial penalties. Logan Hall and SVD had no business being on the field tonight. Todd will hang out special team players and likely the offense but his D? It is frustrating to see them give up a score on every opening drive. Yeah Todd will point to 4 sacks, 2 turnovers and the Lions going 3 for 13 on third down but neglect to mention allowing the explosive plays which were the difference tonight. Tough night to be a Buc fan but lets face it, Todd never has his teams ready for prime time besides beating a soon to be 2 dash 4 Texan team. 1-7 in the last 8 primetime games reflect on the head coach.
October 21st, 2025 at 1:44 am
The defense/Bowles hate is idiotic.
If it wasn’t for the defense, this game would have been lost by 35 points. The defense held them in check, got turnovers & sacks, and kept giving the offense chances.
This loss is 100% on the offense. The play calling, the quarterback play by Baker, the nonexistent run game, poor blocking, and receivers who cannot get any separation, except TEZ (even if he was running the wrong route a couple times)
October 21st, 2025 at 2:34 am
Grizzard gets an “F” for this game.
Why so many routes where the WRs were running into each other?
Was so many low percentage out routes on critical 3rd downs? If the pass wasn’t perfect it wouldn’t get caught inbounds. When your QB is having an off game accuracy wise you need to adjust.
How do you not attack the hell out of that beat up Lions secondary? Go to the hurry up (so Hutchinson can’t rest) and play out of the shotgun.
We should have destroyed their depleted secondary.
October 21st, 2025 at 3:23 am
The D is the reason we are not a SuperBowl team. You wanna see a SuperBowl team? Look at Detroit and how their D made us fight for every yard we got… Does our D look like that?
Every game we start by offering the first 2 Q to our opponents…. We had our D as healthy as it can be without Kancey, Detroit had their secondary completely depleted and yet which D was fighting for every catch, hustling to every run?
This is not a SB worthy D, even if the “pundits” continue to sing the praise of “exotic blitzes and coverage schemes” of a certain washed out Guru still leaving off a SB 5 years ago….
October 21st, 2025 at 5:06 am
Defense was ready? It took two big plays, and about one minute to score on the opening drive. Dennis looked like a dog chasing a car named Gibbs all night. They had too many big plays that resulted in three TDs. Ready to play is a three, and out to open the game, not three plays and a TD. When we finally did score, the offense sucked too, they came back with a score of their own. Yeah, that Bowles defense really took it to them. Total team loss, the defense, nor the offense came ready to play, the Lions did. Lions came out fired up. The Bucs came out cold as ice, and could never get out of their own way. That’s on Todd. His troops weren’t ready.
October 21st, 2025 at 8:04 am
The better D wore black and blue. Held the “MVP” in check. All with a decimated secondary.
Yeah the D made some plays and they are supposed to. However, Gibbs broke records last night. No accolades for a D that allows records to be broken.
No good D coordinator or HC should be happy about the way our D played.
If so, we have low standards and expect another one and done in January, if Atlanta doesn’t catch us.
October 21st, 2025 at 9:40 am
For every magical play , remember a Baker batted ball negates it !! The Lions were more physical, they went after the ball Hard and they were very fundamental with the D line getting their hands up . Baker struggled throwing over and around them from the outset !
October 21st, 2025 at 10:33 am
For everyone talking about the defense just to see the offense mess the bed smh idc been saying the defense mostly will come through it’s up to the offense to be better and it also helps if the refs aren’t either A) scared of the crowd or B) being paid to throw bs flags it only happens on the games the buccaneers consider big games to us think about Atlanta last year Winfield got cheated so did zy for a pick and tykee to both games of Atlanta then Kansas City game called a bunch of bs calls this year it’s been the same in Atlanta it seemed like everything the coaches nitpick with ref about he got it the eagles games didn’t seem right nor did last nights game I don’t understand how we keep getting disrespected on national tv almost every week if it’s not the refs it’s the announcers its always bs when it comes to us
October 21st, 2025 at 12:52 pm
It was clear as day that the problem was Baker had a bad night. Really and truly any other complain did not caused the loss.
The Todd haters are bizarre. They were waiting for a game like this to throw rocks at the HC. SMH