A new Pewter Report Roundtable debuts every Tuesday on PewterReport.com. Each week, the Pewter Reporters tackle another tough Bucs question. This week’s prompt: It’s Festivus! So taking a page from Seinfeld, the hit comedy TV show from the 1990s, the Pewter Reporters will be airing their biggest grievance about the Bucs this week.

Scott Reynolds: Bucs Cannot Effectively Rush The Passer

If you’ve read my work on Pewter Report.com or tuned into the Pewter Report Podcasts you know that I am a defensive-minded guy. Specifically, I love trench play, especially when it comes to the pass rush. That comes from me growing up as a young kid in Virginia watching Redskins defensive ends Dexter Manley and Charles Mann get after the quarterback, and then Chiefs legends Derrick Thomas and Neil Smith rush the passer when I moved to Kansas City. In my 30 years of Bucs coverage it’s safe to say that Hall of Famer Warren Sapp and Bucs Ring of Honor inductee Simeon Rice were two of my favorite players to cover. Both were menacing pass rushers.

Bucs OLB Chris Braswell and Patriots QB Drake Maye – Photo by: USA Today

This season has been a huge letdown when it comes to the Bucs’ pass rush. It hasn’t been for a lack of effort on the part of general manager Jason Licht who has invested four draft picks in edge rushers over the past three years – Yaya Diaby and Jose Ramirez in 2023, Chris Braswell in 2024 and David Walker this past year. Ramirez, a sixth-round pick, didn’t pan out, and the jury is still out on Walker, who tore his ACL one week into training camp. Diaby has been solid and leads the team in sacks with six, but not spectacular. Braswell looks like a bust as he lacks instincts and a quick get-off.

The Bucs have just 35 sacks this season with two games to go. Under Todd Bowles, the defense has gotten between 44 and 48 sacks each year between 2019-2024. A total of 12.5 of those sacks have come from blitzing linebackers and defensive backs, which means only 23.5 sacks have come from the defensive tackles and outside linebackers. The Bucs will be lucky to reach 40 sacks this season, which is very disappointing, especially considering the fact that the team signed Haason Reddick to a big, one-year, $14 million deal in free agency.

Outside of Vita Vea, who has 4.5 sacks this year at the age of 30, the defensive tackle position has underwhelmed, too. Calijah Kancey has been on injured reserve since Week 2, and he was the team’s best pass rusher in the trenches. Elijah Roberts has shown flashes of potential as a Day 3 pick, but Logan Hall has underwhelmed in a contract year and won’t be back. Tampa Bay needs to add another defensive tackle or two and find two starting-caliber edge rushers in the 2026 season because the lack of a consistent pass rush and the inability to rush four effectively has really hurt the defense.

Matt Matera: Bucs Players Have Either Regressed Or Haven’t Developed

Whether the statement is that Bucs players have regressed or that the young players haven’t developed enough, they each fit the headline for the many problems this team has had this season. The philosophy by Jason Licht and Co. in recent years has been build through the draft and developing players in house. At times its worked, but lately it hasn’t. And coaching has played a big role as to why.

Rams WR Davante Adams and Bucs CB Zyon McCollum – Photo by: USA Today

The defense is where the real problem has been. The team hasn’t had a premier edge rusher in years. Yaya Diaby is the best of the group and he gets the job done on effort alone. His bull rush is nice, but how about adding in other moves? Chris Braswell was supposed to factor into the team’s pass rush, but he’s just been a complete bust.

What’s most glaring on defense has been cornerback Zyon McCollum. They signed him to a big, new extension this year and he’s been beaten like a drum. Antoine Winfield Jr. made the Pro Bowl this year, but hasn’t made the impact plays like he did two seasons ago. What about SirVocea Dennis at inside linebacker? Yes, it’s his first year starting, but third year in the league. He just hasn’t figured it out. Maybe some new coaches will help all of these players ascend.

The biggest grievance on the offensive side probably comes from starting center Graham Barton, who hasn’t taken the next step in progress in his second season that we all believed he would as a former first-round pick. It hasn’t been fair to him with tons of injuries to the guards playing next to him. There’s a lot that the Bucs have to figure out next season from a personnel standpoint.

Adam Slivon: Bucs Offense Not Living Up To Its Potential

In airing out our grievances, one is more than justified for solely discussing the defense. It’s a unit that has disappointed and regressed as the season has gone on. I’ll leave that for other Pewter Reporters to further analyze; instead, I want to focus on the offense here. Coming into the year, they had great expectations to build off a 2024 season where they were the league’s fourth-best scoring offense. Much of the scheme and system is the same year-over-year, but through Week 16, Tampa Bay has just the 18th-ranked scoring offense, averaging just 23.1 points per game.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield, OC Josh Grizzard and HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Some of it is circumstantial, as injuries along the offensive line, to various top wide receivers, and in the running back room all hurt the continuity that was a theme entering 2025. More than that though, it’s a shame to see just how far they have fallen. The promise has been there at times, such as when Tampa Bay beat the Seahawks in Seattle, 38-35. It was one of the few entertaining games the team has had this year, and a case where they beat a top team despite the defense not holding up.

When looking at them now, the Bucs offense is a case of what could have been. Even at full strength, Josh Grizzard’s gameplan (especially in a Week 16 loss at Carolina) has not put the best playmakers in position to make plays enough. For one reason or another, Baker Mayfield is not playing at the same level as he did early on, and his wide receivers have not had as big of years as expected.

It’s a shame that we never got to see the offense playing at full strength with innovative gameplans, as it really could have made up for a lot of what has plagued the team over the past couple of months. It’s been a big letdown from what the unit produced under last year’s offensive coordinator Liam Coen.

Bailey Adams: Bucs Squandering Their 50th Season Is Tough To Stomach

I wrote about this after the Bucs’ inexcusable loss to the Saints earlier this month, and it’s only gotten worse since then. The way this team has collapsed during the second half of the 2025 campaign is putting a real damper on what was supposed to be a special 50th season. The team released their Raise The Flags docuseries to commemorate 50 years of football in Tampa Bay on Amazon Prime – only to lose their Thursday Night Football game on Amazon by blowing a 14-point lead to the Falcons in the fourth quarter.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

It’s not so much that the Bucs needed to win the Super Bowl to properly celebrate 50 seasons of football in Tampa Bay. It just would’ve been nice if this group had made it a memorable season for the right reasons. It started off perfectly in a way with that 5-1 stretch that featured comebacks and late-game heroics. More of that, no midseason slump and maybe a playoff win or two would’ve made for a feel-good 50th season. 

Instead, the season went completely off the rails after the bye week. And even if the Bucs somehow manage to back their way into another NFC South title, a first-round playoff exit feels inevitable anyway. It’s just hard to stomach the fact that after all of the amazing work the Bucs did from an organizational standpoint for this 50th season celebration and how special they made it for the fans, the team on its field couldn’t hold up its end of the bargain. 

Josh Queipo: Bucs’ Failure To Execute Makes Me Sad

Bucs fans and media alike begged for the team to run more man coverage this year. They did. And the results make me sad. That’s my grievance. Jamel Dean, in the midst of one of the best seasons of his career, failed to stay on top of Panthers rookie receiver Tetairoa McMillan leading to a touchdown that may have been the inflection point for a doomed season. Todd Bowles has tried to mix in more man coverage this year, and at almost every turn has been let down by the execution of his players.

Bucs OLB Haason Reddick – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

The Bucs brought in a better pass rusher than former first-round pick Joe Tryon-Shoyinka. Haason Reddick represented an investment in the four-man pass rush. The defense has rushed with four or less more this year. But they still cannot generate enough sacks and consistent pressure to make up for deficiencies in the middle of the field.

Many will disagree with me, but the tape is littered with open receivers. But when they are, Baker Mayfield fails to find them or misfires. When it looks like he is on the same page as his receivers, the interior of the line fails to protect for enough time to allow the play to develop. When Mayfield reads out the right defense and route, his receivers are at the wrong depth or make the wrong option decision.

Don’t get me started on kick coverage.

The Bucs have failed to execute on the field all season long across all three phases of the game. I don’t disagree with the theory of Todd Bowles’ defensive scheme. It is similar to other defensive masterminds who have had recent success. But when two out of three levels of the defense play the call right it is almost guaranteed the third will fail. When Josh Grizzard calls a great play, it is an almost certainty that one-third of the process of execution will doom the call.

And that makes me sad.