Pewter Report president Hugh MacArthur, a life-long Bucs follower and NFL fan, offers up his weekly thoughts on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the rest of the league each Tuesday on PewterReport.com in The Dirty Dozen column.

Bucs Losses Are Starting To Look Familiar

Here is baker’s dozen thoughts that crossed my desk this week…

1. Bucs September Sundays are starting to look and feel familiar. The Bucs will leave September without a win. The last time they started 0-3 was 2014. That team finished 2-14 in Lovie Smith’s first season as head coach and picked first in the 2015 NFL Draft. Bucs fans of a certain age remember when Sundays routinely felt like this. Bad football. Creative ways to lose. Long weeks in between. I hoped we were done with this years ago. Tampa Bay is now 2-10 in its last 12 games dating back to last year, and 16-22 in one-score games under Todd Bowles. Sigh.

2. The Zac Robinson experience. As of this writing, Robinson’s offense may be the most locally overhyped, underdelivering force in the NFL. Three games in, what exactly is it? What do we do well? What are we trying to make the defense defend? I can identify individual plays. I still can’t identify the offense. Robinson can’t throw it for Baker Mayfield or block for him. But somebody has to have a plan.

3. About that Baker Mayfield contract. I like Baker Mayfield. I have defended Baker Mayfield. I thought extending Baker Mayfield made sense. I am changing my mind on that last one as I type this. Three bad games don’t erase three good years. But $55 million a year feels like considerably more money than it did three Sundays ago.

4. Jalon Daniels. Starting quarterback. Baker Mayfield’s MRI brought relatively good news. No fracture. No tendon tear. No surgery expected. But he will miss at least three weeks. So Jalon Daniels becomes the first undrafted rookie ever to start at quarterback in the Bucs’ 51 seasons. It is also the first time in eight years Tampa Bay has been forced to change quarterbacks during a season. At 0-3 and going in the wrong direction, I’m at least curious for one week.

Bucs QB Jalon Daniels – Photo by: IMAGN Images via Reuters Connect

5. Has anyone seen Chris Godwin Jr.? Three catches. Twenty five yards. Four targets Sunday. On the one play where Godwin briefly escaped the FBI’s witness protection program, he went 85 yards for a touchdown. Holding on Luke Goedeke negates the big play the Bucs needed. Back into hiding he goes.

6. First-and-goal from the 7. What could go wrong? Bucky Irving runs to the 3-yard line. Holding on Cody Mauch. First-and-goal from the 17. Baker Mayfield hits Irving for five. Holding on Graham Barton. First-and-goal from the 27. Two snaps. Two holds. Twenty yards in the wrong direction. No great play by Minnesota required. The Bucs did it all by themselves. Chase McLaughlin eventually kicked the field goal.

7. Chase McLaughlin, I hope you skipped Monday’s meeting. Last week I told McLaughlin he could skip the Monday meeting after going 4-of-4 against the Browns. He went 3-of-3 Sunday against the Vikings and is now 9-of-9 on field goals this season. He has scored 23 of the Bucs’ 35 points the last two weeks. I am beginning to worry Tampa Bay is building the offense around the kicker.

8. Being healthy was supposed to fix this. Last season the Bucs cycled through nine different starting offensive line combinations and allowed 38 sacks in 17 games. This year the intended five are finally together. Baker Mayfield has already been sacked 13 times and pressured 38 times in three games. That’s more than a third of last year’s sacks before we’ve reached October. Pro Football Focus still had this group ranked No. 2 in the NFL after Week 2 based on the talent in the room. On paper, this is one of the best lines in football. I’d like to see the paper start blocking somebody.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

9. Homefield advantage, NFC South edition. The NFC South is 0-5 at home this season. Zero wins. Five losses. Tampa is 0-2 at Raymond James and nobody else has managed to win in their own building either. Apparently the secret to winning a game in this division is playing it somewhere else.

10. The Saints get points for trying. Nothing makes a Bucs fan feel better after a loss. Let’s establish that. But New Orleans at least tried. The Saints led the Raiders 27-22 entering the fourth quarter. Their final four possessions went fumble, interception, fumble, fumble. Raiders 35, Saints 27. Misery may not love company, but it apparently has plenty of it in the NFC South.

11. Two offenses looking for answers. Matt LaFleur was refreshingly candid after Green Bay’s loss to Atlanta: “Right now, I don’t know what we’re doing well offensively.” He could have been describing either team. Green Bay has scored 56 points through three games. Tampa Bay has scored 62. The Packers are 10-of-36 on third down. The Bucs are 14-of-43. So LaFleur and Zac Robinson arrive Sunday with essentially the same assignment: figure out what their offenses actually do well. Maybe one of them will.

12. At some point, this is coaching. Much of the Bucs coaching staff has changed since last season, so you can’t hang 10 losses in 12 games on the same group of assistants. But Todd Bowles is the head coach. He is the constant, and ultimately he owns all of it. Players hold. Players miss throws. Players miss blocks. I get it. But when a team expected to contend keeps losing and looks this bad doing it, coaching has to be part of the explanation. Have a plan. Put players in position to succeed. Fix what isn’t working. That’s the job.

13. Bucs really are one game out of first place! Todd Bowles pointed that out Sunday. His math is correct. Congratulations. Funny enough, he made almost the same point in 2023 when the Bucs were 4-7. At least that team had won four games. These Bucs are 0-3. They have not won a football game. Not one. Win one. Then we can get out the calculator.