The Bucs allowed 234 yard in kick coverage against the Bills in their 44-32 loss at Buffalo.

That’s not a typo.

Tampa Bay allowed 234 yards and a 39-yard average per return.

The Bills’ average starting position after a Bucs kickoff was their own 44-yard line. Any way you slice it that is terrible.

With kickers able to regularly hit field goals from 50+ yards these days, allowing this kind of field goal disadvantage is effectively asking the defense to hold opposing offenses to 16 yards or less.

Coming into this game Tampa Bay’s unit was already bad. The team was allowing the fifth-highest yards per return in the NFL at 27.9. That number now goes up to 29.1.

What are the issues that plague this unit? Looking through some of the biggest returns allowed this season before the Week 11 debacle against the Bills, it was often the Bucs getting out leveraged by the kick returner at the edges of the field. Christian Izien and Josh Hayes both got caught jumping inside and not maintaining their outside lane integrity and giving up a seam down the sideline. Kaevon Merriweather was also victimized on this twice.

Bills KR Ray Davis – Photo by: USA Today

Tampa Bay allowed Buffalo to have four kickoffs that went for 41 yards or more, including three of those by Ray Davis. After the second long return, Bowles should have ordered kicker Chase McLaughlin to kick them through the end zone and given the Bills the ball at their 35-yard line. That would have saved Tampa Bay’s defense 15-20 yards worth of field position to have to defend.

“We talked about kicking it out of bounds and in the end zone, and we never got it there,” Bowles said. “Not very good. We were playing seven-on-seven football starting from the midfield and beyond the entire game. That’s tough to do in the NFL consistently throughout. So the kickoff coverage in the field position really killed us.”

Special Teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey’s approach to the new kickoff rules is not working.

And it needs to change – fast.

Special Teams Blunders Are More Than Just Kickoff Returns

The Bucs’ punting game has stabilized. Punter Riley Dixon had a fantastic day against the Bills, putting three of his four boots inside the 20. That included one punt that was downed at the Buffalo 5-yard line and another that went out of bounds at the 8. His fourth punt resulted in a Bills turnover, as Josh Hayes punched the ball out of Mecole Hardman’s hands and Ryan Miller jumped on the ball.

But through Week 10 Dixon was the fifth worst punter in the NFL by epa/punt.

Week 10 punter rankings:

-Rigo remains on top
-Bailey, Stout, and Evans having impressive seasons
-Braden Mann has dropped off in a big way since his impressive start to the season pic.twitter.com/iYoXkKVTxK

— Puntalytics (@ThePuntRunts) November 11, 2025

This is in large part due to not one – but two – blocked punts McGaughey’s unit allowed in the first four weeks of the season. On both plays Sean Tucker allowed a defender to turn the corner from the edge, with the second also featuring long snapper Evan Deckers failing to get off his snap quick enough to wall off Sydney Brown. During this stretch, head coach Todd Bowles noted Dixon also had to work on getting his punts off faster.

Bucs P Riley Dixon – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Add in a block of a Chase McLaughlin kick in Week 3 and his overall inaccuracies to start the season and overall, the Bucs special teams have struggled to excess this year. The lone bright spot from the team’s third phase has been their punt return game. Coming into Week 11, they ranked ninth in average yards per return (12.9), tied for third in returns of 20+ yards (3) and tied for first in returns of 40+ yards (2).

Pro Football Focus has various unit grades as a part of their team evaluations. Included in those units is a special teams grade. It’s no surprise that the Bucs rank towards the bottom in that metric at 24th overall.

Too Many Mistakes By The Bucs Special Teams

While each of these issues have popped up in an almost isolated manner, it’s the lack of complimentary football that plagues this part of the team. It’s a rare occasion where all four units – kick coverage, kick return, punt return and punt coverage – all coalesce into a great special teams game. More often, one of those units is so bad it is having an outsized negative eefect on the game overall.

And if McGaughey doesn’t figure it out soon, it may be he who is changed.