Bucs HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

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Pewter Report’s Scott Reynolds answers your questions from the @PewterReport X account this week in the Bucs Mailbag. Submit your question to SR each week via X using the hashtag #PRMailbag.  Here are the Bucs questions we chose to answer for this week’s edition.

QUESTION: How can Tampa Bay ownership be content with Todd Bowles and mediocrity?

ANSWER: I cannot speak for the Glazers, but I too am growing weary of these losses to teams with losing records like New Orleans, Atlanta and Miami. Since the bye week, the Bucs have one win and that came over a three-win Arizona team by three points. Over the last eight games, Tampa Bay is 1-7 and has been one of the worst teams in football over that stretch. The Bucs are in the same class as the Cardinals, Raiders, Giants and Titans over the second half of the season.

That’s not mediocre. That’s terrible. The Bucs are a bad football team right now and they do not resemble the team that started the season 6-2, beating the Seahawks and 49ers along the way. Todd Bowles’ team is getting worse, not better. It’s clear that he doesn’t have the answers needed to fix the problems. And if he doesn’t have the necessary answers right now, I don’t know what makes the Glazers believe that Bowles will magically conjure up those answers in 2026.

Bucs HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

With the loss in Miami, Bowles’ record as Tampa Bay’s head coach is 34-33 in his four seasons at the helm. In two of his four seasons – 2022 and 2025 – the Bucs will have a losing record. We’ll need to wait until Saturday to determine if Tampa Bay will finish 7-10 or 8-9 with another division title, which seems fraudulent and hollow because the NFC South is the worst division in football.

If the Bucs played in the NFC West or the NFC North, I doubt that Bowles would have won a single division title over the last four years. So being the king of crap hill by winning hats and t-shirts and hoisting up fancy banners in the indoor practice facility is a little meaningless when the postseason record is 1-3 with two home playoff losses in the Wild Card round.

The Glazers need to ask themselves, “What’s the goal?” Is it to win Super Bowls and build a championship roster that can truly compete with the best teams in the league? Or is to accept mediocrity by just barely winning the worst division in football year after year with records that hover around .500? I’ll take the former, please.

QUESTION: A report came out before the game that Todd Bowles is not in jeopardy of losing his job. Is that accurate? Has ownership shifted from the persona they show in the documentary or is that a P.R. move from Bowles? If accurate, why have the Glazers changed to accept mediocrity?

ANSWER: I sure as hell hope not. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport suggested that Todd Bowles was safe because he got a contract extension in the offseason and has won three NFC South titles in a row. I think that’s simply conjecture on Rapoport’s part. At least I hope it is. And keep in mind that Rapoport’s report came out before Tampa Bay’s 20-17 loss at Miami, which guaranteed the Bucs a losing season in 2025.

The best part of the Bucs’ Raise The Flags docuseries was showing how hands on and how bold the Glazers are. Tampa Bay’s ownership family is very private and guarded. The Glazers rarely speak publicly and don’t do any media interviews outside of once a year at the NFL Annual Meeting. But the Trent Cooper-produced Raise The Flags docuseries was fascinating in how it revealed the Glazers’ line of thinking and approach when it comes to running the franchise.

Bucs GM Jason Licht, co-owners Darcie Glazer Kassewitz and Joel Glazer, head coach Todd Bowles and senior football consultant Bruce Arians – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

I hope the Glazers do not accept what is happening right now with a 1-7 record down the stretch and chalk it up to injuries. This is the healthiest the Bucs have been all season and all they’ve done is lose. Tampa Bay was far worse off with injuries during the team’s 6-2 start than it is right now. That’s just a fact. Injuries absolutely cannot be an excuse for this dramatic free fall since the bye week.

What’s happened over the second half of the 2025 season is more akin to Raheem Morris’ 2011 team losing 10 straight games after a 4-2 start than Jon Gruden’s 2008 team losing the final four games after a 9-3 start. Yet both Morris and Gruden were fired after those respective seasons. And it should be noted that Gruden’s firing came nearly a year after he was just given a lucrative, multi-year contract extension.

This is a Bucs team that is screaming “no direction” right now. Unless Bowles and the Bucs can beat the Panthers and then somehow advance to the NFC Championship Game, I can’t see how him being retained in 2026 can be justified. The 62-year old Bowles is truly a great man and deserves a ton of respect. But it certainly feels like this team has peaked and gone as far as he can take it. The Bucs need new leadership in 2026.

QUESTION: In seeing how the Glazers have operated in the past, who would be some offensive-minded head coaching names to watch out for if Todd Bowles is given the hook? Klint Kubiak and Joe Brady come to mind immediately for me.

ANSWER: This is not a great hiring cycle for offensive-minded head coaches. Seattle offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and Buffalo’s Joe Brady are the two most talked about head coaching candidates, as there is no Ben Johnson or Liam Coen type available right now. The reason is that the league has mostly offensive-minded head coaches that call their own plays.

Therefore, the offensive coordinators and pass game coordinators for teams like the Rams, Bears, Packers, Broncos, 49ers, etc. are coordinators in title only. They don’t call plays, and thus there is no body of work to properly evaluate for a head coaching position.

Being a head coach is more than just being a good play-caller. It’s being a leader of an entire team and someone who can motivate an offense and a defense, in addition to special teams. It’s being a problem solver and a tone setter. When a new coach is hired he has to be “sold” to the team by what he has accomplished elsewhere. So it’s a tough sell to the players when a new coach comes in and he hasn’t called plays on offense or defense before.

Seahawks OC Klint Kubiak and QB Sam Darnold – Photo by IMAGN Images – Steven Bisig

I’m not a fan of Kubiak’s personality. I think he’s a really good play-caller, but not head coaching material because of his lack of charisma and personality. Don’t believe me? Look up any of his press conferences or media interviews on YouTube and you can try to convince me otherwise.

As for Brady, he’s known for being LSU’s offensive coordinator when Joe Burrow was the quarterback and for being Buffalo’s play-caller with Josh Allen. How much of his success has been because of his own doing and how much has been because of Burrow and Allen? Brady had a terrible two-year stint from 2020-21 when he didn’t have a star quarterback.

If I were the Glazers and I was dead set on hiring an offensive-minded head coach, I would strongly consider hiring Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken. He’s had a ton of success in Baltimore since 2023 and before that he helped Georgia win two national championships with walk-on Stetson Bennett at quarterback. Monken, who was the Bucs receivers coach under Dirk Koetter and the offensive coordinator in the 2018 season, is a no-nonsense, hard-nosed coach that would draw some comparisons to Bruce Arians in terms of his demeanor.

Ravens OC Todd Monken – Photo by: IMAGN Images – Tommy Gilligan

At age 59, Monken is younger than Arians was when he came to Tampa Bay at age 67 back in 2019, and with several seasons coaching in the college ranks recently it’s clear that his schemes are innovative and that he is in touch with today’s generation of football players. He also comes with a sense of familiarity, as he worked for general manager Jason Licht and the Glazers before.

Monken interviewed for the Bucs offensive coordinator position in 2023 and was offered the job, only to have him turn it down to work for John Harbaugh and work with Lamar Jackson instead. You couldn’t blame Monken at the time with Bowles coming off an 8-9 record in 2022 and Tom Brady retiring afterwards. Nobody wanted that offensive coordinator job outside of Dave Canales.

QUESTION: Could a coach trade be in the works again? With the Vikings having a down year and there being constant rumors about Kevin O’Connell’s job stability, could the Bucs do exactly what they did with Jon Gruden but two decades later with O’Connell? He would be a better option than any coordinator.

ANSWER: That’s an interesting scenario for sure. The Glazers have done it once before with Jon Gruden back in 2002, and Minnesota head coach Kevin O’Connell would be quite a get for sure. In four seasons with the Vikings, O’Connell has gone 13-4, 7-10, 14-3 and 8-8. Injuries have played a part for sure, but what is a bit worrisome is the fact that the offense and point production has dipped considerably with the records. During the 13-4 and 14-3 seasons in 2022 and 2024, respectively, the Vikings offense ranked eighth and ninth in scoring. During the 7-10 season in 2023 and this year’s 8-8 campaign, Minnesota ranked 22nd and 25th in scoring.

Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell Photo By: USA Today

Still, the 40-year old O’Connell is considered to be a rising star and he’s had two high quality seasons so far. O’Connell comes from the Sean McVay coaching tree with two seasons in Los Angeles as the Rams offensive coordinator while McVay called the plays. He personally helped revive the career of Sam Darnold during the 2024 season and could work wonders with Baker Mayfield.

The most recent trade involving a head coach was the Saints trading Sean Payton to the Broncos for a first-round pick in 2023, and second-round and third-round picks in 2024. So that’s likely around what the cost would be to acquire O’Connell in a hypothetical trade.

Rams DC Chris Shula – Photo by: IMAGN Images – Mark J. Rebilas

Speaking of McVay, an option I would very much be in favor of would be to look at possibly hiring Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula, who has tremendous leadership qualities and is viewed as the defensive version of McVay himself. Then he could bring L.A. pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase with him to call plays as the offensive coordinator, and when Scheelhaase eventually leaves to become a head coach, then Shula can keep plucking QBs coaches or pass game coordinators from L.A. with McVay continuing to call plays. The Rams could be the Bucs’ farm system for offensive coordinators for years to come.

QUESTION: Why should I be excited about a new coach? Go look at every offensive genius right now. They all have a ton of wins, and there simply isn’t an offensive genius out there to be hired. Klint Kubiak does not inspire me. We had Liam Coen in our building and we kept Todd Bowles instead.

ANSWER: Just because this is a down cycle for offensive-minded head coaches does not mean that the Glazers should be fine with the status quo and keep Todd Bowles around because there is no clear-cut, apparent replacement like there was this past year with Ben Johnson and Liam Coen. The last time I checked, there were a pair of defensive-minded head coaches in New England’s Mike Vrabel and Seattle’s Mike Macdonald that had teams with 13-3 records right now.

I understand the logic of wanting to go with a offensive-minded head coach for the sake of the play-calling and system continuity for the sake of the franchise quarterback. Possibly finding new offensive coordinators every year can be problematic, as has been the case in Tampa Bay in going from Byron Leftwich to Dave Canales to Coen to Josh Grizzard. That’s far from ideal.

Bucs ST coordinator Thomas McGaughey, OC Josh Grizzard and HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

But we can’t overlook the fact that the Bucs defense is actually the broken side of the team right now. Bowles’ scoring defense has regressed from seventh in the league in 2023 to 16th last year to 23rd this season. There is virtually nothing that this defense can hang its hat on right now. It’s can’t effectively rush the passer. It can’t cover without coverage busts. It doesn’t tackle well. Bowles’ defense doesn’t create takeaways on a regular basis.

I’m with you in that Klint Kubiak does not inspire me, either. He’s a good play-caller for sure, but does he have the charisma, aura, personality and leadership qualities to lead and inspire an entire team? I don’t think so.

Just because there is no ideal candidate out there right now to replace Bowles does not mean there should be inaction. Tony Dungy didn’t seem like the ideal candidate and wasn’t the first choice of the Glazers in 1996, but that move seemed to work out quite well in the end.