The Power Of Sacks
October 15th, 2026
Is Todd Bowles and Bucs front office on different pages?
KitKat-eating Bucs coach Todd Bowles’ confession this week that sacks are not a part of winning football has Joe simply dizzy in confusion but not surprised.
Joe has long held the belief that since Bowles took over the Bucs, he has de-emphasized sacks in his defense. This also explains another of Joe’s long-held beliefs, backed up by significant documentation, that Bowles either has zero inclination to develop an edge rusher or cannot develop an edge rusher.
Joe always thought that the objective of a defense is to prevent an offense from scoring. Bowles worships at the altar of the almighty turnover, which Joe firmly believes is as much luck and hope as skill.
At bare minimum, a defense has to hope an offensive player makes a mistake in order to get a turnover. And as we all know, takeaways are not a direct, absolute path to wins. They help, but Joe has seen way too many rotten teams over the years beat their chests at their ability to get takeaways.
And what happens if your defense, which cannot get sacks, then cannot get a turnover? Uh, oh.
Anyone remember how Tom Brady threw three picks in the NFC title game on the road in 2020 season? How’d that turn out? So much for offensive turnovers directly leading to losses.
You know what else is a turnover? Forcing a team off the field on a three-and-out with the quarterback licking his wounds on the sideline after getting crushed by a pass rusher.
Back to keeping the opponent from scoring points. While these numbers are a couple of years old, the data from handicapper-turned-stathead Warren Sharp directly reinforce a Tom Moore axiom that when an offense takes a sack, its chances of scoring a touchdown drop to 7 percent.
As recently as two seasons ago, offenses that did not suffer a sack scored on 41 percent of their drives; 21 percent ended in touchdowns. When an offense did take a sack, the scoring percentage dropped to 23 percent with eight percent of the drives ending in touchdowns.
That’s a pretty significant drop. As Sharp typed, “Sacks are drive-killers.”
But not in the eyes of the man responsible for the Bucs’ on-field product, including the defense.
Joe, in a weird way, is happy Bowles finally said the quiet out loud and so clearly. But this public revelation speaks to either dysfunction and/or a disconnect between the Bucs’ front office and Bowles.
If, as Bowles admitted, he doesn’t value sacks, why on earth has the team burned so much draft capital into a position the head coach/defensive coordinator doesn’t want to use? That would be like drafting a noodle-armed wishbone quarterback to run a pro-style offense.
Just this decade the Bucs have spent two first-round picks on edge rushers (Joe Tryon-Shoyinka, Rueben Bain), a second-round pick (Chris Braswell) and a third-round pick (YaYa Diaby).
Of those four, only YaYa showed promise (yes, Joe agrees, it is still way too early to know about Bain) but since YaYa recorded 7.5 sacks in his rookie year, he has gone straight downhill since.
While JTS was drafted under the Bucco Bruce Arians’ regime, all four of the aforementioned edge rushers would never have been drafted where they were by the Bucs unless they had demonstrated an ability to develop into top-flight edge rushers at the NFL level. So they were all taken for a coach who has no desire or ambition to either develop their pass-rushing skills or use them to sack the passer.
As for sacks not being a part of winning football, the only time the Bucs had a consistent, dominant edge rush, the worst the team did was advance to the NFC title game. (Lee Roy Selmon, 1979 NFC Championship; Simeon Rice, Super Bowl win; Jason Pierre-Paul, Shaq Barrett, Super Bowl win.)
Has Bowles never detailed his philosophy on sacks to the front office?
This isn’t just madness; it’s irresponsible madness. Talk about throwing valuable draft capital out the window.
Joe cannot imagine Team Glazer is happy witnessing tens of millions of their loot lit on fire for no good reason.
Peyton Manning says he hates when Quarterbacks take sacks to protect their completion percentage because only 7% of drives turned into touchdowns after a first down sack
“If you give up a seven-yard sack, your chances of converting, that drive is almost over. Tom Moore at the… pic.twitter.com/skut1T7Veb
— Josh Chambers (@JoshChambers) September 16, 2026
October 15th, 2026 at 4:34 am
Lets get rid of our pass rushers(we don’t use them anyway) and use extra safeties. LOL GO todd!
October 15th, 2026 at 5:30 am
What Manning says bothers me too.
Its like an epidemic now, you can see it even at the college level.
All these sport talkingheads-stat freaking-pff tribing know it all are creating narratives and you can see it now affecting the game. You can see QBs taking sacks or even running out of bounds for a loss instead of throwing the ball out. Ridicilous.
Personal stats are secondary in a team sport but we have created a culture of stats chasing to put people up or down.
Its a team sport its not Tennis. Team win is above anything else or at least it should be.
October 15th, 2026 at 6:06 am
Joe sees what he wants to see. Sacks, like turnovers, require skill and luck. Similarly, they both require mistakes from the offense. You can quote stats all you want but zero offenses score touchdowns after committing turnovers. I seriously doubt that teams with more sacks than their opponents have a greater winning percentage than teams with more turnovers. Turnovers are drive killers. Sacks are drive slower downers.
I’ve said it dozens of times that I want both. Guess what, Bowles does too. The proof is in how often he blitzes. Bowles talks about pressures, a term Joe hates. I get it but I would argue that Bowles is speaking bigger picture. Pressures lead to throwaways, interceptions, fumbles, groundings and yes, sacks. He wants it all.
October 15th, 2026 at 6:21 am
And that defensive philosophy is exactly why he’s a below .500 coach.
October 15th, 2026 at 6:39 am
Lest we forget Marcus Jones who had 13 sacks at edge in 2000 leading us to a Wild card berth.
October 15th, 2026 at 6:46 am
He wants a roster where any one of the front 7 can rush the passer, or play coverage. Interchangeable parts so he can appear brilliant with his blitzes.
And so you have usually at least 1 and as many as 6 not doing what they do best, on every play. But hey look at these blitzes, isn’t he brilliant?
October 15th, 2026 at 7:10 am
We only need a couple of sacks. The GM and head coach
October 15th, 2026 at 7:28 am
Lol 2 wayfarer, good one
YES JOE, MADNESS AND RECKLESS DESCRIBES BOWLES PURRRRFECTLY
October 15th, 2026 at 8:13 am
Joe, why would you argue with the Guru of defense? He will trick the QB with his brilliant scheme!
October 15th, 2026 at 8:20 am
The Bowles 1-6 Defense special soon. Drop all but the nose guard in to coverage. Let VV rush by himself.
October 15th, 2026 at 8:40 am
Todd Bowles is full of $h!t. If he had edge rushers like Super Bowl winners Sapp and Barrett, you would be hearing a different narrative from Todd Bowles. I get it, he doesn’t want to call out Bains, Walker and Kancey who aren’t living up to all of their hype.
October 15th, 2026 at 8:41 am
I vote to fire Bowels today. I wanted him gone last week, last season, two seasons ago, and never gifting him the HC position. One win against a crap defense does not change the past. I get that removing an HC is seen as throwing in the towel “in-season,” but it already looks like a failed season.
October 15th, 2026 at 8:43 am
Sacks don’t matter, the other things matter. And most fans over-value wins. There’s a lot more to enjoy about the Bucs than that. Bowles has shown that to be true.
October 15th, 2026 at 8:47 am
I believe I’ve read that the Steelers receivers are banged up and they are going to have to use a few newbies. If we can keep the tight ends covered up a little bit, who knows? We might sack Rodgers a half a dozen times. And even without Winfield and Morrison, we have us a pretty salty secondary this year. Any of those guys can blitz and get a sack. Or they can pick you. Hope Winfield’s ribs heal up and Morrison can get his legs. This secondary is good enough to help our line get some sacks.
Won’t that be something watching our defense win us a football game? Sunday is the perfect day for it to happen. Maybe we hold them to 10, or maybe 13 points? And 6 sacks to go along with it- yes, that’s the ticket! DEFENSE!! SACKS!! MAYHEM!!
If our defense continues gaining confidence, the sacks will come. If we somehow put together a top 10-or top 5 defense? Then the wins will come. In droves.
October 15th, 2026 at 9:38 am
Frankly, I don’t see a win for this poorly coached team in the next 3 weeks! Let the rebuilding begin!
October 15th, 2026 at 10:00 am
Bowels has always made more than his share of comments that were either some form of an excuse, contradicting, did not make sense, or was just plain stupid. As desperation creeps in, such comments be multiplied.
October 15th, 2026 at 11:22 am
Todd’s win loss record is proof positive that Todd doesn’t really know what he’s doing.
October 15th, 2026 at 11:28 am
Such a joke they call him a defensive guru who doesn’t understand the importance of a sack in a football game.
October 15th, 2026 at 12:22 pm
Broken F’n record! Rent a billboard.
October 15th, 2026 at 1:23 pm
Bowles sounds like a jealous DB. I bet a defensive head coach who once coached d-line would say shut down corners aren’t important as long as there’s a good pass rush.
October 15th, 2026 at 3:44 pm
Ice cream eating Joe is going to ride sacks and pass yards allowed until the wheels fall off even though neither matter nearly as much as he believes or says they do. Smh.
Oh yeah, and he didn’t say “sacks are not a part of winning football”…. He said sacks don’t win games – there’s a difference. And he’s right – if sacks won games the Browns would have managed more success, or Cinci etc.
Just another reach by this Joe to shade Todd and keep the trolls fed. 🙄