Managing your family’s wealth means more to Amuni Financial than simply allocating your assets. It means legacy planning, brokerage & advisory services, retirement accounts, college savings accounts and insurance services. With 40 years of experience, let Amuni Financial help you plan ahead and stay ahead.

Call Amuni Financial at (800) 868-6864 or visit Amuni.com.

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

QUESTION: Brock Purdy is a stud, but a 158.3 rating? After what C.J. Stroud did to us? Come on. Never expected to win this game but that pathetic and fireable. On the Niners’ last drive of the first half where was YaYa Diaby? JTS in the game instead? Come on. This staff ain’t it. Will ownership see this?

ANSWER: Yes, the Glazer family – Bucs ownership – attends every game and plays close attention. They see everything we all see when watching the game, including strategy, execution and personnel usage. And they read our content on PewterReport.com. Tampa Bay head coach Todd Bowles is the defensive play-caller and has been labeled a defensive mastermind, so it’s double damning when his side of the ball has so many issues, breakdowns and poor performances. It doesn’t help that it has come against a rookie quarterback in C.J. Stroud and a young quarterback in Brock Purdy who has shredded the Bucs defense twice now in as many years.

Bowles is not only responsible for game-planning and the play calls during the game, but also personnel usage. I don’t know what he and outside linebackers coach George Edwards were thinking in playing Joe Tryon-Shoyinka 34 snaps and playing YaYa Diaby only 21. Diaby recorded four tackles and two sacks in the 27-14 loss at San Francisco, while JTS had zero tackles and was largely invisible despite out-snapping Diaby by 13 plays.

That certainly won’t help Bowles’ cause at the end of the season when the Glazers and general manager Jason Licht evaluate the head coach’s performance this season. It’s a coach’s responsibility to play the best players and anyone with a pair of working eyes can see that Diaby is playing better and making more of an impact than Tryon-Shoyinka right now.

QUESTION: Which players deserve to be benched and who would replace them?

Bucs OLB YaYa Diaby – Photo by: USA Today

ANSWER: This question is the perfect follow-up from the previous one. I’m not suggesting that Joe Tryon-Shoyinka should be benched and not play at all. But for Todd Bowles and his coaching staff to play him 34 snaps and only play YaYa Diaby 21 snaps and fellow rookie edge rusher Markees Watts just three snaps is a really bad look. The return on investment in playing JTS that much yielded zero statistics. No tackles, no sacks, not even a QB hit.

Meanwhile, Diaby had four tackles, including three tackles for loss, two of which were sacks. Plus he had two QB hits. Diaby needs more playing time to gain more experience and improve as a rookie pass rusher. So not affording him that when his return on play-time investment is substantial is just madness. It’s poor coaching.

Diaby has four sacks on the season, which is tied for the second most by a rookie this season, and is tied for second-most on the team with Shaq Barrett. Bucs nose tackle Vita Vea leads Tampa Bay with 5.5 sacks and has sacks in back-to-back games. Tryon-Shoyinka has three sacks, with his last coming against Detroit back in Week 6. He doesn’t deserve the high snap counts he’s getting.

It was also curious to see defensive tackle Logan Hall out-snap Calijah Kancey in San Francisco, 40 snaps to 32. Hall, who had two more snaps than Vea, had two tackles against the 49ers after not posting any statistics since the Lions game. Kancey was shut out statistically, but has shown more promise and production. I’d make sure the rookie plays the most snaps at defensive tackle every week if I was Bowles.

I would also bench Devin White, who was practically invisible on Sunday in San Francisco despite playing every snap on defense. His 49ers counterpart, Fred Warner, was all over the field with 12 tackles, two pass breakups and a forced fumble. Heck, Lavonte David, White’s own teammate, had seven tackles, three tackles for loss and a sack despite only playing three quarters due to a fourth quarter groin injury. Heck, rookie SirVocea Dennis nearly matched White’s production, finishing with two tackles while playing just 17 snaps for David.

QUESTION: What are we as Bucs fans supposed to be rooting for the rest of the season? Because they aren’t going anywhere in the playoffs.

ANSWER: It’s hard to imagine this Bucs team with their shortcomings winning a playoff game this year. Those shortcomings include inconsistent play on both offense and defense, in addition to poor clock management, questionable game-plans and personnel usage. But first Tampa Bay must make the playoffs in order to have any chance at a postseason victory.

The Bucs have a slew of winnable games coming up down the stretch, but winning all seven games to finish 11-6 is all but impossible. Reaching 10-7 with a 6-1 finish seems highly improbable for this Todd Bowles-led team that has lived in the realm of inconsistency for a year and a half now. Realistically, a 5-2 finish is what is probably needed for the Bucs to either win the NFC South or make the playoffs as a Wild Card.

I discuss what it might take for Bowles to stay on as head coach in Tampa Bay in 2024 in a brand new Pewter Pulse video on our PewterReportTV YouTube channel. I encourage you to watch it as I expand on Bowles’ future and what the Glazers might be looking for down the stretch.

QUESTION: At what point does a coaching change happen for this team? I know the Glazers have never made an in-season change, but even for it to happen in the off-season, what is the bar – 5, 6, 7 wins? Or will just missing the playoffs in general get Todd Bowles fired?

Bucs HC Todd Bowles and 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan – Photo by: USA Today

ANSWER: If the Bucs miss the playoffs, I do feel Todd Bowles will not return as Tampa Bay’s head coach in 2024. That would not be progress, and the Glazers want to see progress this season after last year’s 8-9 record, which also came with a division title and a playoff berth. Winning five, six or seven games this year would not be progress and I would strongly assume be grounds for dismissal.

And you are correct in saying that the Glazers won’t make an in-season firing. They’ve given every head coach they’ve hired at least two full seasons to prove themselves. Even as Raheem Morris’ third and final year was spiraling out of control with a 10-game losing streak to end the 2011 season, the Glazers let it ride out and fired him at the conclusion.

They’ll give Bowles the same amount of time, and at 4-6, the Bucs aren’t out of the playoff race nor are they out of the NFC South title hunt. Bowles and Tampa Bay have a lot of work today in the final seven games and probably need to win at least five of them to have a shot at the postseason. With each loss the Bucs’ margin for error narrows and time is running out.

QUESTION: Being in the terrible NFC South is the worst scenario for this team. They can’t beat good teams, or even teams that are mediocre. But everyone hangs the season on winning the division. What does the Glazer family see as a successful season at this point?

ANSWER: Just winning the division might not be enough to save Todd Bowles’ job this year. The Glazers will be looking for real progress this season after the Bucs went 8-9 and won the NFC South a year ago, but lost a home playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys. Winning the NFC South division again would help Bowles, but he may have to do more to stay on as the captain of the Bucs’ ship.

Again, check out my new Pewter Pulse video for more on this topic as I go into greater detail in the five-minute video.

QUESTION: Is the defense’s inability to get off the field more of a player issue, or scheme issue?

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

ANSWER: Short answer – it’s both. Generally speaking, when it comes to defensive play in football, it boils down to three things.

The first is the wrong call at the wrong time. When offenses dial up the perfect play to attack the weakness in a particular defensive call and execute it well, such as hit the sideline holes in Cover 2 between a corner or a safety or beating the Mike linebacker down the seam in the middle of Tampa 2 between the two deep safeties.

The second is the right call, but poor execution. The offense’s play is anticipated due to film study of down and distance, personnel and formation and tendency, but a player or two fails to do his assignment.

The third is the perfect defensive call and perfect execution. The Bucs do more of the first two and not enough of the latter, unfortunately.

QUESTION: Who would you rather have – Justin Fields or Jayden Daniels?

LSU QB Jayden Daniels – Photo by: USA Today

ANSWER: At this point, I would prefer to take LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels. He’s a playmaker with both his arm and his legs and makes very good decisions with the football. I think he’s got a high football I.Q. and avoids mistakes.

Daniels has completed 72.6% of his passes for 3,577 yards with 36 passing touchdowns and just four interceptions this season. In his two seasons at LSU, Daniels has passed for 53 touchdowns and just seven interceptions. That’s an awful lot of plays and not many mistakes. I think Daniels has the “it” factor.

Daniels is also an incredibly fast athlete, who ran for 885 yards and 11 TDs last year, and has already run for 1,014 yards and 10 scores while averaging an absurd 8.2 yards per carry. What I don’t like about Daniels is his skinny frame. I wish he was bigger. He’s 6-foot-4 and maybe 205-210 pounds.

Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson has a bigger, more durable frame, and even he still takes a pounding on designed QB run plays and scrambles from the pocket. Daniels won’t be able to shred fast NFL defenses on the ground the way he has in college, but his escapability and speed are a plus.

But I think he has more upside than Justin Fields, who is a similar dual-threat quarterback. Fields struggles to see the field from the pocket and I’m not sure he’s going to improve enough in that area to be a difference-maker at QB. He’s got 36 touchdowns and 27 interceptions in his Bears career, including 12 TDs this season and six picks. He’s a dangerous runner, but needs to improve as a thrower from the pocket. What’s worse is that he has commandeered just seven wins in the 34 games he’s played in.