Todd Bowles Talks Fourth-Down Troubles
December 10th, 2025
Todd Bowles
Remember the first Saints game this year in New Orleans?
The Bucs won big but also needed eight tries to score once from the 1 yard line.
That specific issue continued Sunday: short-yardage blues … and fourth-down woes can be thrown in.
“We stuffed the middle like a turkey,” Saints edge rusher Carl Granderson told NOLA.com on Sunday. “[The Bucs] couldn’t run up the middle. … We knew they were going to try and hit (the) outside. It was a wrap after that.”
Granderson was referencing the Bucs’ failed 4th-and-1 pitch to Bucky Irving near midfield late in the first quarter. It came after Rachaad White failed running on 3rd-and-2.
Later, Sean Tucker failed running up the gut on 4th-and-1. Overall, the Bucs failed five times on fourth down and converted twice.
“The biggest ones earlier were 4th-and-1, you know, we gotta be able to get a yard. You want to think in this league that you can get a yard and they kind of stuffed us the first game and they stuffed us this past game, too,” Todd Bowles told the Buccaneers Radio Network.
“So we gotta get better there from either blocking it or scheming it. Either way we gotta get better there as it got down later in the game. The fourth downs we had to go for a couple of ’em. We had one, we dropped one but we didn’t execute and we were close on one that we didn’t get. But we gotta do better on fourth down.”
Bowles is right. The inability to gain one yard when needed has to be fixed.
December 10th, 2025 at 1:44 am
Pathetic is the only way to describe it.
December 10th, 2025 at 1:53 am
pitch back to Bucky on 4th down. Wow just stiupid. Grizz is a football moron, I don’t care what Ivy league school he went to. Total garbage from an OC that is clueless. lol.
December 10th, 2025 at 1:54 am
Problem solved. We got to do better? I got one. We need to score more points. Brilliant. I mean i learn something new from this guy every time he talks(not). If he only knew what to do to get his team to play better, i do believe he would. He just has no clue, no feel for the game. What actually is he good at? Motivating players? Coaching pass defense? I’m sad now. Thanks a lot! It’s a Bucs life! Fire over confident mistake prone clueless Bowles!
December 10th, 2025 at 2:18 am
The ballgame came down to the Bucs going a lowly 3-for-13 on 3rd down conversions and a ludicrous 2-for-7 on 4th down conversions. This team had numerous chances to put the ballgame away and totally blew it.
That’s a combination of 2 things IMO. One: terrible play-calling (read what the Saints’ players said about defending those attempts and it’s obvious what they thought of our capability). Two: No physicality in the trenches. You’ve gotta be able to win the mano-a-mano battles. We can’t.