With the worst defense in the NFL, the calls for defensive coordinator Mike Smith’s head on a silver platter get bigger and bigger each week.

Many thought the bye week might be the time for the Bucs to make a change to the position, but Smith has survived, and head coach Dirk Koetter explained his line of thinking when he hears the call for a new coordinator.

“Every week, every game, it’s way bigger than any one guy,” Koetter said. “It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than Mike. It’s bigger than Gerald McCoy. It’s bigger than any one person – it’s a team game. That was really my whole point. Any time anybody, me included, singles one person out for the cause of all of our problems or the cause of our success – guess what? That’s not right. It’s much more than that. I know how we game plan as a staff. I know how guys coach on the field, just like I know how guys play in practice and sometimes carry it over to the game better than others. It’s the greatest team game in the word, so any blame that goes to one person – I get how, shoot I’m a fan of my son’s team or my daughter’s volleyball team. I talk just like fans when it’s my kids and then I have to check myself on that.

“The coordinators in the NFL call the plays in, they help organize the game plan. They don’t game plan – I guess some could we don’t do it that way –  they don’t do the whole game plan themselves. Again, look at it from both positive and negative. Never all one person’s fault and it’s never all one person’s credit. Certain people in the league – quarterbacks, coordinators – tend to get more credit or more blame than they deserve and the same goes for quarterbacks.”

Koetter did give his players an assignment during the bye week. He asked them for some feedback and said he appreciated their honesty.

Bucs DL coach Brentson Buckner and DC Mike Smith – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“In a couple of areas..I’m not going to tell you the areas, but just some areas that I felt like I wanted to see,” Koetter said. “When you’re a college coach and guys aren’t leaving town, you from time-to-time meet with every guy on your team. Well, I didn’t have time with everybody leaving last Tuesday for six days to meet with every guy. I put together just a very short thing that I asked the guys to give me some feedback and they did an awesome job. I really appreciate their honesty because sometimes honesty can be self-defeating – make yourself look bad – but I appreciate their honesty. The communication I think both ways – player-coach, coach-player – was good.”

Despite the Bucs being 2-2, the way they lost their last game – 48-10 at Chicago – the mood of the fans is understandably down. But Koetter said the glass is still half full.

“Like we said last time when we were in here in this group, would we have all felt better if we would’ve lost the first two and won the second two?” Koetter said. “We’re 2-2. We’re one game – going into tonight – out of first place in the division and we beat the team that’s on top. We have a road win in the division in our only game. Those are important things to remember. There’s 12 more. There’s three quarters in the season and you know we’re not exactly where we want to be, but we’re also right where we need to be as far as competing for the next 12 weeks.”