The Tampa Bay Buccaneers just finished 8-9 – and yet still had a chance to win the NFC South in Week 18. That tells you everything you need to know about the division. It also tells you everything you need to know about how spectacularly Todd Bowles and the Bucs managed to waste their opportunity.

Tampa Bay did its part Saturday with a sloppy, 16-14 win over Carolina to reach 8-9, then got bounced anyway when Atlanta beat New Orleans, 19-17 – creating a three-way 8-9 tie that sent the Panthers to the playoffs and left the Bucs watching from home.

And if you’re looking for the moment the season officially snapped in half? Tampa started 3-0, sat 6-2 at the bye, and then turned the second half into a slow-motion free fall.

Now the organization faces the uncomfortable truth: the Bucs aren’t “a few breaks” away. They’re a pattern away.

And the pattern has Todd Bowles’ fingerprints all over it – from situational football, to staff construction, to roster construction to the weekly vibe of a team that too often looks like it’s trying to survive games rather than win them.

Atlanta’s Raheem Morris just got fired after an 8-9 season, too. Yet the Falcons actually finished strong down the stretch with four straight wins. The Bucs were the worst team in the NFC over the last month of the season with a 1-3 record.

Yes, Bowles had his contract extended last summer through 2028, but the final year is likely a team option. Yet that doesn’t mean Tampa Bay has to ride this thing until the wheels fall off. Here are five reasons the Bucs need to move on from Todd Bowles and his staff after this 8-9, no-playoffs faceplant.

5. The NFC South Was Historically Soft – And The Bucs Still Couldn’t Win It

When the division champ can finish 8-9, the bar isn’t “high.” It’s basically a speed bump. And Tampa Bay still tripped over it.

This wasn’t just a season where the Bucs just got run out of the room by elite teams like the Eagles, Patriots, Bills and Rams. This was a season where they got edged out in a division that spent three months daring someone – anyone – to take control.

Bucs HC Todd Bowles and Panthers HC Dave Canales – Photo by: IMAGN Images – Nathan Ray Seebeck

Tampa Bay suffered four straight losses to teams with losing records – New Orleans, Atlanta, Carolina and Miami – in the month of December. If you can’t take advantage of that, then what exactly is the argument for continuity? And if Bowles couldn’t figure out what was wrong in 2025 and fix it, what makes the Glazers feel like he can suddenly find the answers in 2026 so this doesn’t happen again?

4. The Post-Bye Collapse Wasn’t A Fluke – It Was A Coaching Indictment

The Bucs were 6-2 at the bye. They finished 8-9. That’s not “bad luck.” That’s an organizational collapse that falls squarely at the feet of head coach Todd Bowles.

Pewter Report’s Bailey Adams nailed the ugly reality: the Bucs went into a skid out of the bye (including a winless December) that left them desperate for help in Week 18.

Good staffs self-scout, adapt, and evolve. Tampa Bay came out of the bye looking like a team that had been solved by its opponents – and stayed solved all season. The second half of the season was basically a weekly reminder that “starting strong” isn’t the same thing as being good.

3. Todd Bowles’ Defense Simply Isn’t Good Enough

Todd Bowles is a defensive coach and the defense’s play-caller. That’s the brand. Bowles’ side of the ball should be the team strength, but it’s been Tampa Bay’s obvious weakness the last two years. The Bucs finished allowing 24.2 points per game, which ranked 22nd in the league.

Why did the season’s most defining loss involve the defense giving up a brutal late collapse – including a third-and-28 and a fourth-and-14 conversion on the Falcons’ final drive before the game-winning kick on Thursday Night Football in Week 15? With the way the season turned out, losing a 14-point lead with 10 minutes left is a fireable offense on its own.

Falcons TE Kyle Pitts and Bucs CB Kindle Vildor – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

After that game Bowles detonated at the podium with an expletive-laced rant that went viral. The rant itself was fine. Coaches are human. Emotion isn’t illegal, and it was actually a welcomed sight from such a stoic man who gets criticized for not showing enough emotion. But here’s the issue: the moment felt less like a “leader lighting a fire” and more like “leader watching the building burn.”

Bowles called the loss “inexcusable” and emphasized that the onus fell on players to hold each other accountable and execute. That’s not accountability – that’s a coaching staff publicly pointing at the roster like, “Well, I did my job.”

When you’re the head coach, everything is your job. Especially the stuff that keeps happening.

Bowles’ defense is soft and has lacked a killer instinct for years now. His coaching staff is sub-par and several assistant coaches need to be fired. The constant coverage busts are a weekly staple, as is the lack of a consistent pass rush. Tampa Bay can’t even stop the run on a consistent basis. Heck, the Bucs can’t even beat rookie quarterbacks or backup quarterbacks, which is embarrassing.

If Bowles was a walk-around coach like Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin or Baltimore’s John Harbaugh, everyone would be saying “fire the defensive coordinator.”

Yet Bowles is the defensive coordinator.

2. Tampa Bay’s Offense Somehow Got Worse The Healthier It Got

There were plenty of injuries in Tampa Bay during the 2025 season, but most of the significant ones occurred in the first half of the season when the Bucs went 6-2. As the team got healthier down the stretch and outside linebacker Haason Reddick, running back Bucky Irving and receivers Mike Evans and Jalen McMillan returned, the record got worse as Tampa Bay finished 2-7 after the bye week.

The Bucs scored 22.4 points per game, which ranked 18th in the NFL. Not awful, but certainly not special. The Bucs averaged a touchdown less per game this season from a year ago.

Todd Bowles promoted Josh Grizzard to offensive coordinator after Liam Coen left to become Jacksonville’s head coach and was supposed to continue with Coen’s playbook. But Grizzard was not the same innovative play-caller and play sequencer that his predecessor was. And Baker Mayfield regressed statistically under Grizzard’s watch.

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

And Pewter Report’s own postgame analysis asked the obvious question: what happened to the offense down the stretch? Despite having a healthy array of weapons at Baker Mayfield’s disposal, the Bucs averaged just 17 points per game over the last three weeks of the season against the likes of Carolina twice and Miami.

Last year, Coen’s offense averaged close to 30 points per game and was the crutch Bowles’ bad defense needed to be propped up with. With Grizzard not having close to the same amount of success, the Bucs fell flat on their face without a strong offense to lean on.

1. The Todd Bowles Era Is A Mediocrity Treadmill

Here’s the most damning part: this season felt predictable in hindsight. Yes, there was excitement following a 10-7 record in 2024 and expectation for new heights in 2025. But after a 6-2 start that featured four last-minute wins, we began to see some cracks in the Bucs’ armor this season that had Todd Bowles’ fingerprints all over it.

• late-game conservatism
• situational miscues
• special teams issues
• defensive breakdowns at the worst times
• lack of a consistent pass rush
• lack of takeaways on defense
• a four-game losing streak for the third year in a row

Bucs HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

If your head coach is in Year 4 and the team still has the same chronic issues – that’s not “bad breaks.” That’s the program. Bowles has a 35-33 record as Tampa Bay’s head coach. He now has two losing 8-9 records in his four seasons as head coach.

The bottom line is that change isn’t scary – staying the same is. Todd Bowles is a great man and a respected coach around the league. He’s also the head coach of a team that just took a 6-2 start, turned it into an 8-9 finish, and somehow managed to miss the playoffs in a division that sent an 8-9 team anyway.

At some point, “continuity” becomes code for “we’re fine being stuck.”

And if the Bucs are serious about chasing more than NFC South participation trophies, they need a staff built for modern NFL offense, sharper situational football, and a culture that doesn’t require a viral meltdown to acknowledge what everyone can already see.

If the Glazers don’t fire Todd Bowles he will immediately enter the 2026 season on the hot seat due to the epic second half collapse in the 2025 season and the 8-9 record that followed. Is that who they want to continue with – a very unpopular head coach with the fan base and one that let a very winnable division slip away?