There’s A Reason For Everything
February 14th, 2026
Curious non-move.
So this is a unique angle.
It’s been well established given the comments on just about every post Joe has published on this here website the past month, the constant chirping on local sports radio, and the flood of videos on TikTok and missives from all sorts of other social media platforms, that most Bucs fans are not happy head coach Todd Bowles is still leading the Bucs.
Joe *still* gets comments on Twitter asking if Team Glazer will reassess? Joe informs these folks that Bowles is safe and entrenched until at least January 2027.
But there has been a gutting of the coaching staff — whether Bowles was ordered by Team Glazer to make changes or Bowles saw fit himself is unclear — with the exception of one major non-move. The Bucs didn’t hire a defensive coordinator.
This led Joe’s good friend, NFL humorist and scribe Mike Tanier to some deep thinking on his Substack page “Too Deep Zone.” Why wouldn’t Bowles hire a defensive coordinator? The Bucs defense was what did this team in last season and in the season prior.
But Tanier figured out why Bowles may have been hesitant.
Todd Bowles held onto his job despite numerous defensive lapses and the team’s listless performance against weak competition down the stretch. Bowles … plans to serve as his own defensive coordinator in 2026. Sounds like he’s afraid of hiring his replacement.
And there you have it. That makes as much sense as anything else.
Joe sure hopes the very same defensive players that clearly tuned Bowles out last year are wired up with new antennae.
February 14th, 2026 at 11:07 am
Yeah, i mean who would hire their own replacement if you didn’t have to? Especially if he is a defensive guru, let him guru. Seems he has one more chance to show his guruness. All we have is hope. Hope we get the players to process his confusing defense and hope they stay healthy and hope we have top level replacements when they are injured. It’s s Bucs life
February 14th, 2026 at 11:08 am
I still believe that the Bucs first half the season success put fear in IBS that Grizzard might replace him so IBS sabotaged Grizz the second half….
IBS knows how crappy he truly is at coaching and he knows it is just a matter of time he will be replaced and easily forgotten!
February 14th, 2026 at 11:13 am
Who is IBS? Enough acronym boy. Todd Bowles was retained because the other football team is bleeding money and building a new stadium. Todd is cheap and has a guaranteed v contract. There might be an element of fear of a liberal friends backlash as,well.
February 14th, 2026 at 11:21 am
The owners are once again in the box canyon and surrounded with little or no chance of escape. My best guess is that the team continues to put up +-.500 seasons and Bowles finishes his contract. The key now is what will Baker do ?
February 14th, 2026 at 11:27 am
Ready for Blunderball 2027.
February 14th, 2026 at 11:28 am
Sorry as long as Bowles is coach this team is cooked. Even if they do get off to a good start we all know how it will end.
February 14th, 2026 at 11:30 am
Yeah, he got rid of a lot of dead weight coaches and then hired his son!
February 14th, 2026 at 11:38 am
‘Tye Says:
February 14th, 2026 at 11:08 am
I still believe that the Bucs first half the season success put fear in IBS that Grizzard might replace him so IBS sabotaged Grizz the second half….
IBS knows how crappy he truly is at coaching and he knows it is just a matter of time he will be replaced and easily forgotten!’
No Bowles fan…. but really, Tye you think Grizzard was up to the task?
February 14th, 2026 at 11:49 am
JOE: if u know ur gonna get fired if ur specialty (defense) is holding this team back, he better find a way to change something! How and why wouldn’t u do anything different to at least try and make it better!? Or is he that pig headed and is gonna go down with the ship with his way or hyway!? Nevermind I answered my own question…and he will have a nice pay day to sit at home and play golf or most likely hit multiple buffets when he gets clipped…but its us fans that have to suffer until 2027 now…bummer
February 14th, 2026 at 11:55 am
He hired JR to take over for him. Don’t worry all you negative Nancie’s, when we fire TB you’ll get jr as his replacement for the next 5 years lol
February 14th, 2026 at 12:15 pm
Joe … ‘Joe sure hopes the very same defensive players that clearly tuned Bowles out last year are wired up with new antennae.’
They didn’t make the ‘big plays’ when they were sorely needed, but I still think it’s a stretch to conclude Joe that the players on defense ‘tuned Bowles out’.
Of the 7 games we lost after the BYE, only 2 were blow-outs (Buffalo (44-32) and the Rams (34-7). Of the other 5 losses:
o Patriots (28-23): Losing by 5 pts to the #2 offense in the league doesn’t imply that the defense was ‘tuned out’ to me.
o Saints (24-20): Losing by 4 pts to the Saints sucked, but the Bucs’ defense hit their average of giving up 24.2 PPG.
o Falcons (29-28): Losing by 1 pt to the Falcons also sucked, but we had them in the 4th qtr until the INT, then things went downhill. Still don’t think they were ‘tuned out’ since they stopped TWO Falcon 2-pt attempts in that same 4th qtr.
o Panthers (23-20): Losing by 3 pts to the Panthers also sucked, but the Bucs’ defense gave up slightly less than their season’s 24.2 PPG average.
o Dolphins (20-17): Losing by 3 pts to the Dolphins again sucked, but the Bucs’ defense gave up 4 pts less than their season’s 24.2 PPG average.
Bucs had a chance to win any of those 5 games, but instead we won NONE. Had we pulled out all FIVE, we would’ve ended the season 13-4 and everyone would’ve peed their pants they’d be so excited. Instead they won NONE of those. We can talk about it & write about it all day, but the key reality IMO is that we need better coaching & better players. Concluding that the defensive players ‘tuned Bowles out’ doesn’t work for me given that those end-of-season losses were so close score-wise.
February 14th, 2026 at 12:20 pm
@ Marky Mark – The Glazers are behind the current regime in power in the US. They don’t care about that stuff.
February 14th, 2026 at 12:29 pm
A true leader would not blame his staff, He would fall on the sword. Keeping him was bad but him blaming everyone else is worse.
February 14th, 2026 at 12:37 pm
Todd hired his son as a towel boy for the defense. By year end he should be able to take care of the DC duties.
February 14th, 2026 at 12:38 pm
Keeping Bowles was for a non football related reason
For Sure
No football reason to keep Bowles
No Other Team would have kept him
February 14th, 2026 at 12:47 pm
Defense Rules:
You can dig up any kind of stat you want. The evidence is all out there for anyone with a working pair of eyes and ears. Defenders tuned Bowles out.
Only those with their heads buried in the sand pretend otherwise.
February 14th, 2026 at 1:09 pm
Going 2-7 down the stretch after the bye when your record was 6-2 will almost always get you run as the HC\DC. Unless you’re Todd Bowles.
Losing four straight games to mediocre opponents while chasing a division title and missing the playoffs because of it should always get you fired. Unless you’re Todd Bowles.
Having two under 500 seasons in four years of being the HC\DC and a 1-3 record in the playoffs should get you run, Unless you’re Todd Bowles.
Tony Dungy and Jon Gruden got fired for a lot less and way better results.
But Todd Bowles provides the culture the Glazers love. Losing culture.
February 14th, 2026 at 1:29 pm
What is confusing to me is when he had talent Bowles had a killer defense and no one was complaining. The Rams loss was every bit as much on the offense that day and not the long pass to Kupp by itself as so many people remember, 1 play earlier we missed on a Stafford fumble deep in Rams territory. Not to mention Winfield slipped on the play and accepts blame for the completion so that argument is crap. I was wanting Bowles gone because of the 2 mid-season slumps and worse last seasons slid. Again he righted the ship the first 2 times. The offense was terrible every game since the Buffalo game, the defense was crap in that game as they let 1 guy beat them. The big plays given up on defense all over the place just pissed everyone off and so my question is this: Was it lack of talent, lack of coaching, players giving up or a combination off all 3 and maybe more? No doubt the eyeball test showed a total lack of incentive or just really stupid play making on the players part. Bowles said it was guys not doing in the game what they did in practice. I don’t get that cause if you loaf as a player that gets out and around the league and then you have no employer. Was it just guys not able to grasp the system? The Super Bowl team sure grasped it. There is more to this than we will ever know and maybe the Bucs ARE looking into a D coordinator and have to keep quiet about it, but I doubt it. I think he got the pass for 2 reasons in the Glazers mind. Injuries and a lack of talent. Coaching must have been a part of the ones canned. If they make the right moves for the defense this off season they could bounce back with a really good D.
February 14th, 2026 at 1:34 pm
Because perhaps Todd Bowles has never been insubordinate with Team Glazer and those two were?
February 14th, 2026 at 1:44 pm
“Defense Rules:
You can dig up any kind of stat you want. The evidence is all out there for anyone with a working pair of eyes and ears. Defenders tuned Bowles out.
Only those with their heads buried in the sand pretend otherwise.”
Thanks Joe. There is a lot of blame to go around including Grizzard and Baker down the stretch but this D was better on paper this season than last and somehow Bowles didn’t get better results.
According to Defense Rules (ironic name) all the offense has to do is score 25-30 pts a game and Bucs would never lose. Also can’t have an INT (that isn’t entirely the QBs fault) at the opposing 40 yard line up by 14 points or it’s a loss! Haha unbelievable.
February 14th, 2026 at 1:47 pm
I would think he needs a Conference Championship appearance to get yet another year.
February 14th, 2026 at 1:53 pm
People are so anxious to blame Bowles, they are forgetting the other issues.
And there were plenty of them.
Special Teams, for example, had horrible coverage…letting teams start around mid field too many times.
February 14th, 2026 at 1:58 pm
Bonzai.. Bowles is Captain of the ship. If it goes down it is his fault. He should have seen the iceberg.
February 14th, 2026 at 1:59 pm
No no no, Todd is the best. He’s just misunderstood. It was everyone else, obviously. And they’ve been fired. And now we have Two Todds so the family will be coaching the Bucs into the 2030s. It will be exciting to see whether the Bucs can put together another winning season over the next few, and maybe even win another playoff game over the next decade.
What a great time to be a Bucs fan.
February 14th, 2026 at 2:11 pm
Joe says”
“Because perhaps Todd Bowles has never been insubordinate with Team Glazer and those two were?”
Insubordinate?? Do you mean they had the b@lls to state the glaringly obvious?
Dungy built the defense from absolute zero into one of the greatest of all time. He just had no QB and was too conservative on defense. But he got within a few points of the SB. More than Bowles can ever say.
Gruden was able to improve the offense enough to actually score the needed points and he motivated the defense to be even better. He actually won an SB title as a HC. More than Bowles will ever say.
Stop carrying the water for this fraud. It’s a bad look.
February 14th, 2026 at 2:25 pm
Joe says:
“You can dig up any kind of stat you want. The evidence is all out there for anyone with a working pair of eyes and ears. Defenders tuned Bowles out.”
Evidence ?? Another opinion – nothing more.
Might be right but I don’t see any “evidence” that it’s true. Speculation @ best.
February 14th, 2026 at 2:29 pm
The only chance Bowles has to be successful with the defense this year is to get the players that laid down last year replaced.
February 14th, 2026 at 2:54 pm
I didn’t ever feel like the defense tuned Bowles out. His conservative play calling and what looked like his occasional meddling with the offense were enough to tick me off more than a time or two. But the team never quit on him. Overall he’s a good football coach who desperately needs some football players on his defense.
February 14th, 2026 at 3:22 pm
I’ll just say that it is very very hard (if not impossible) to recapture the attention, respect & effort from the locker room – once your message has become stale, dated, repetitive & the players have tuned your message out.
That is exactly what appears to have happened in 2025…& Bowles explanation of McCollum becoming bored in coverage & losing technique while giving up big plays comes to mind as a easy example…But the major drop off in Sack production from the front 7 – regardless of a good pressure rate – also shows that the Bucs D in 2025 was not the stalwart needed to be a real contender.
I mean, you are what your record & stats say you are…That data says that the Bucs D were middle of the road unit over the course of the season and down right pathetic thru the DEC stretch losing to teams that they should have beaten!
February 14th, 2026 at 3:35 pm
No idea who Mike Tanier is but his opinion doesn’t hold any more cred than anyone else on this board.
So here’s mine. If the Glazers let Bowles go during or after this season nobody keeps their job, it’s a clean sweep. New HC that is a complete change. Bowles is the DC because he just believes he’s the best option. It’s that simple.
February 14th, 2026 at 4:03 pm
You are what your record says you are and Bowles has a pretty definitive trend for how every one of his seasons plays out. If he would have slopped into on win in the middle of that mess after the bye, 2025 would have been almost a carbon copy of every season that he’s been a HC for the Bucs.
Start out every season strong when every team in the NFL is feeling out their roster and making the requisite changes, but then when other teams are fine tuning and hitting their groove, Bowles is settling into the inevitable rut that comes from making no adjustments.
Bowles is a middle of the road coach. Thats what his record says he is. There’s not much evidence to deny it.
…and @DR, to your point, if the Bucs don’t pull out some heroics and get lucky early in the 2025 season, they could have very easily finished with a 4-13 record as opposed to the 13-4 that you mentioned.
February 14th, 2026 at 4:59 pm
The reason is WOKE Glazerhouses.
February 14th, 2026 at 5:10 pm
Hiring his own replacement is akin admitting he failed as defensive coordinator. Bowles does not have the courage to accept such an admission.
February 14th, 2026 at 5:29 pm
The amount of commenters that use liberalism, woke or some other code for racism as the reason he keeps his job is gross. Turn off the Fox News and go outside.
February 14th, 2026 at 5:45 pm
I’m starting to think the Glazers did not fire Bowles because it was cheaper to keep him. They got quite a bit going on with their Soccer United Manchester franchise. And Football might not be their top priority. What other rationale could there be? A coach has 2 mediocre seasons and loses 3 straight games to divisional opponets at home down the stretch and 3 straight right out of the bye.. And quess what? If Bowles goes 9-8 or 10-7 nextr season? We are stuck with him again. Spinning for eternity in Mediocrity.
February 14th, 2026 at 6:44 pm
HC Grover Says:
February 14th, 2026 at 4:59 pm
The reason is WOKE Glazerhouses.
_______
Yep and Goodell had to remind them of the leagues’ “quota.”
February 14th, 2026 at 6:54 pm
gotbbucs … ‘and @DR, to your point, if the Bucs don’t pull out some heroics and get lucky early in the 2025 season, they could have very easily finished with a 4-13 record as opposed to the 13-4 that you mentioned.’
I wrote that exact same thing on JBF about a month or so ago. Baker won 4 games at the start of the season in the last minute of play. Had he not shown such ‘heriocs’, Bucs could’ve easily ended up 4-13 instead of 8-9.
Just goes to show however what a bizarre season 2025 was … starting 6-2 but ending 2-7. LOTS of reasons (injuries, some bad coaching decisions, some poor play execution, some poor player selections, etc, etc) but it seems to be so much easier for many JBFers to just say ‘Bowles sucks’. Brilliant analyses.
February 14th, 2026 at 7:04 pm
Joe … ‘The evidence is all out there for anyone with a working pair of eyes and ears. Defenders tuned Bowles out.’
‘Tuning Bowles out’ implies to me Joe that Bowles was telling them to do one thing, but they DECIDED for themselves to do something quite different.
Sounds to me like you’re describing a mutiny, where the crew made decisions NOT to do what the captain told them to do. IF that was the case in actuality, wouldn’t the players be more responsible for the poor results on defense than Todd Bowles is?
Of course, none of that ‘crew’ has admitted to any of that, thus I’m still looking for EVIDENCE. Apparently, stats aren’t evidence.
February 14th, 2026 at 7:08 pm
“Joe Says:
February 14th, 2026 at 1:34 pm
Tony Dungy and Jon Gruden got fired for a lot less and way better results.
Because perhaps Todd Bowles has never been insubordinate with Team Glazer and those two were?”
So Joe, you are saying TB knows his place. You may not realize it, but you’re walking on thin ice making derogatory statements like that. Yasirrr!
February 14th, 2026 at 8:24 pm
another wasted season coming up
hard to feel optimistic after that horrific end of the season
it’s shocking that the head coach was retained
hopefully we’ll see something positive
February 14th, 2026 at 9:31 pm
He’s an insecure little man. You see it every season with who he throws under the bus when they loose.
February 14th, 2026 at 9:34 pm
@CurseofGruden, Joe has finally realized he doesn’t have to bow to the Glazerhouses like he seemed he needed to the last two seasons. He doesn’t answer to them. This isn’t buccaneers.com.
February 15th, 2026 at 5:25 am
Crap stirring Joe Bucs fan. I really enjoyed the two articles in the last year that weren’t just trolling pieces
How about something meaningful? Do you have any free agent addition ideas? How about what this offense may look like under Zac Robinson? How about some updates on injuries to David walker or Cody mauch. How about some creativity instead of the same divisive hornets nest kicking you crap you spew out once a week
Yet you’re hear at 5 a.m. commenting. … Joe has written about several free agents, and referenced how Mauch will be back before training camp, and written about how Bucs officials are excited by Walker’s return and view him as an extra 2026 draft pick after not playing last year.–Joe
February 15th, 2026 at 7:53 am
Hugh Glazerhouse:
I believe you are correct in your analysis of Joe’s writing mindset.
Keep on tappin’ the keyboard, Joe!
February 15th, 2026 at 1:09 pm
why doesn’t licht just hire a dc and tell toddie he’s the hc only. if toddie doesn’t like it, he can walk. i thought that’s what a good gm would do.
February 15th, 2026 at 3:50 pm
Defense was and has bin a real problem. We all know and hear about Todd this Todd that but the rational and level headed fans also know that the offense played worse than the defense. Let’s be clear the offense is loaded with talent and that talent came back healthy and they still blew chunks. Outside of some depth pieces and maybe a question mark at RB , OC was a huge need. Now only time will tell if Zac will be the answer. Draft and FA should be defense focused no stone unturned. Get miller as your part time rusher. 9 sacks playing part time come on that’s better than yaya full time. Get Crosby and one more rusher. Beef up the dline and ILB bring Dean back and another vet to pair with the young Parrish and Morison.
February 15th, 2026 at 10:10 pm
Yeah–I’m one of the many who want this sorry ass coach run. Any other team would of fired his ass a long time ago. prediction 4 wins in 2026, Bucs deserve to lose with the ownership too afraid to make a move or too uncaring. Done with caring about the Bucs.