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

QUESTION: I think it’s time to call it. Todd Bowles and Byron Leftwich aren’t the answer. Undisciplined, no creativity on offense, can’t get off the field when it matters, no heart. We may win the division because it’s not good, but we won’t get out of Wild Card weekend.

ANSWER: It remains to be seen if the Bucs will indeed win the NFC South and/or make the playoffs. The Bucs lost a very winnable game at Pittsburgh in extremely disappointing fashion, 20-18, on Sunday. A win next week over the Panthers is crucial to not only improve to 4-3, but to get to 3-0 in the division. As bad of a loss as it was to the Steelers, it was an AFC team and will have less of an impact on the playoff picture at the end of the season. If the Bucs had to lose one game out of the current three-game stretch versus Atlanta, at Pittsburgh and at Carolina, this was the one to lose for that reason.

Bucs OC Byron Leftwich and HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

As for Todd Bowles, he’s 3-3 with a couple of brutal, two-point losses to the Packers and the Steelers and a blowout against the Chiefs sandwiched in between. It’s much too soon to say his tenure as the Bucs head coach has been a failure.

His defense has to play better, especially on third-and-long as the Steelers converted four third downs when needing 11 yards or more. Tampa Bay had just two sacks and no takeaways on defense against a rookie quarterback in Kenny Pickett. As Bowles said after the game, that’s just not good enough.

As for Byron Leftwich, I’m not impressed. The bloom has come off the rose for Leftwich, who is being exposed as a mediocre play-caller – at best. Leftwich’s reputation was propped up by endless praise from former head coach Bruce Arians, who has wanted to see his protégé get a head-coaching job.

In reality, it wasn’t so much the play-calling as it was the offense that featured three future Hall of Famers in Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and Mike Evans, three Pro Bowl offensive linemen in Ali Marpet, Ryan Jensen and Tristan Wirfs, a Pro Bowl-caliber, 1,000-yard receiver in Chris Godwin and another receiver with Hall of Fame-caliber numbers in Antonio Brown.

Now that Marpet and Gronkowski have retired, Jensen is hurt and Brown is gone, Leftwich is getting exposed. His play-calling is predictable, ineffective and lacks any imagination or creativity. When Pittsburgh can have four of its five main defensive backs out of the lineup and still hold Mike Evans to four catches for 42 yards, that’s beyond alarming. The key for Bowles will be to recognize this and do something about it immediately. If he feels like wide receivers coach Kevin Garver can do a better job calling plays that aren’t as predictable, perhaps he needs to make an in-season switch.

Heck, Bowles should even have a conversation about Bruce Arians replacing Leftwich. But Arians wouldn’t do that because it would be torpedoing Leftwich’s chances for getting a head-coaching job. I don’t have the confidence that the offense is going to get any better this year with Leftwich calling the plays with the current personnel.

QUESTION: Do you think the coaches are coaching not to lose? There is no creativity on offense, no deep shots, far fewer and less creative blitz schemes. It seems like the coaches are coaching scared.

ANSWER: I don’t think that’s the case, but I can see why one would have that opinion, especially when it comes to the Bucs offense. This week, offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich basically said he’s not concerned about scoring 30 points per game. Rather, he wants to score enough points to win the game.

Bucs TE Rob Gronkowski – Photo by: USA Today

Leftwich knows the current shortcomings of his offensive personnel without Pro Bowl left guard Ali Marpet, Pro Bowl center Ryan Jensen and future Hall of Fame tight end Rob Gronkowski. Football is game where the Jimmies and the Joes matter as much – if not more – than the X’s and the O’s. But Leftwich is not doing enough from an X’s and O’s standpoint to help the offense.

There were only two passes longer than 20 yards all day. Was that a function of poor scheme and play design, receivers not getting open or the line not protecting well enough? Perhaps it’s all three. Regardless, Leftwich is responsible for that and it’s on him to figure out a win to improve the passing game, the running game, third-and-short situations and red zone offense. The Bucs simply have to score more than 20 points per game.

One thing Leftwich needs to do is bench rookie left guard Luke Goedeke and give either Brandon Walton or Nick Leverett an opportunity to start. Goedeke is making a tough transition from right tackle at Central Michigan to left guard in the NFL. He’s faced some very difficult challenges in a row with four straight Pro Bowl defensive tackles. He’s really struggled the last two weeks against Atlanta’s Grady Jarrett and Pittsburgh’s Cameron Heyward. At this point, Goedeke is hurting the offense, especially in pass protection, and Leftwich has to realize that and try a different option.

On defense, Todd Bowles has to get better play – and perhaps dial up better coverages and pressure packages – out of his third down defense, especially on third-and-long. While the offense was a lot of what was wrong with Sunday’s outcome, the fact that the Bucs surrendered four consecutive third-and-long situations and could not get off the field contributed mightily to the loss.

QUESTION: With a banged up Steelers secondary why did Mike Evans only get four targets?

ANSWER: Great question, but I’d have to look at the All-22 film to really get a good answer in terms of the coverages. With Tom Brady always throwing to the open receiver, the fact that Mike Evans only got four targets tells me that he was being double covered with a safety over the top. Pittsburgh playing two deep also contributed to the lack of deep balls thrown by Brady.

At the same time, it’s up to offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich to scheme ways for Evans to get open, perhaps by moving him into the slot to get a different matchup, and manufacture some touches. Evans is the best and most consistent weapon on the Bucs offense right now and he was woefully underutilized on Sunday, especially against lesser defensive backs in Pittsburgh.

QUESTION: If Bruce Arians retired, and Bucs insisted on an open coaching search, would Todd Bowles still have been the hire? I doubt it.

ANSWER: Actually, the Bucs have planned on having Todd Bowles as Bruce Arians’ successor for years now. When Arians came out of retirement in his late 60s to coach again, one of the attractive things about his hire was the coaching staff he could assemble, which featured a few candidates that could be viewed as successors. Bowles has been the clear-cut choice for years in the minds of general manager Jason Licht and the Glazers.

Bucs OC Byron Leftwich – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

A brand new coach in 2022 likely would have meant that Tom Brady would have stayed retired, and bringing in a whole new staff would have disrupted the continuity that has been achieved in Tampa Bay. The Bucs went 7-9 in 2019, 11-5 in 2020 and 13-4 last year. That’s a steady climb of progress. It made sense to promote Bowles from within to try to keep that progress going rather than to start from scratch with a new head coach and staff.

Bowles’ record is 3-3 on a Bucs team that is not as talented as the one from a year ago. A slew of early-season injuries haven’t helped, either. A more challenging schedule in 2022 likely meant a regression in terms of the Bucs’ record this season. And the Bucs are four points away from being 5-1 when looking at the Green Bay and the Pittsburgh games. That’s the glass half-full approach.

The glass half-empty approach is looking at two mediocre-at-best teams in the Packers and Steelers and realizing that the Bucs didn’t beat them. That means that Tampa Bay is mediocre itself, and perhaps expectations need to be adjusted accordingly. Is this a Super Bowl contender? It certainly doesn’t look like it. Are the Bucs a playoff team at 3-3? We’ll find out next week in Carolina. If they can improve to 4-3 overall and 3-0 in the division, then yes.

QUESTION: Do you see the Bucs doing an all-in move like the Rams last year with the trade for Von Miller? Any whispers?

ANSWER: None that I’ve heard of yet. The NFL trading deadline is approaching in a couple of weeks and general manager Jason Licht has to decide whether or not to give up a future draft pick for a veteran player that can help right away. Getting a player that can step in and make a difference and be under the age of 30 is ideal.

Licht has traded for edge rusher Jason Pierre-Paul, tight end Rob Gronkowski and right guard Shaq Mason. The Bucs got four years out of Pierre-Paul, two and a half of which were of him playing at a high level. The Bucs got two years out of Gronkowski before he retired this offseason. Tampa Bay expects to get at least two years from Mason, who just turned 29.

The move the Bucs should make is to sign free agent guard Ereck Flowers and bench Luke Goedeke. The 28-year old Flowers has bounced around the league the last few years since being a first-round pick by the Giants in 2015. He spent the 2019 and 2021 seasons in Washington, with a season in Miami in 2020 in between. There’s a reason why Flowers is still available. He’s not perfect. But the 6-foot-6, 330-pound guard does have eight years worth of experience in the league. Goedeke hasn’t even played in eight games yet.