UPDATED 1:00 PM ET: While Hurricane Ian is making landfall on the Gulf Coast of Florida on Wednesday, the Bucs are in Miami practicing at the Dolphins facility. The hurricane track was on a path to hit the Tampa Bay area as of Sunday and Monday, and that put the Bucs’ Sunday Night Football game with the Chiefs at Raymond-James Stadium in peril. But late Tuesday night the storm shifted to the east and is set to make landfall closer to Sarasota and Venice, which is south of Tampa. That could spare the Tampa Bay area of more severe damage and flooding.

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles provided an update on the location of Sunday’s game with the Chiefs via a Zoom call with reporters.

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

“From a preparation standpoint, we’re still preparing,” Bowles said. “We’ve got practice this afternoon and we’re meeting as usual, as normal. We’re trying to see what happens. We’re still waiting for the league as far as that’s concerned and where we would play. Hopefully it’s still Tampa. Right now it is – that’s what we’re preparing to do. We’re going to try to go about business as usual. It’s a little different, but everybody’s family is safe, so hopefully we can concentrate.”

Bowles didn’t have a timetable regarding when the league would make a decision regarding moving the Bucs vs. Chiefs game to another venue.

“Not at this time, we’re still waiting on the league at this time to give us a decision,” Bowles said. “They’re monitoring it. We’re monitoring it together. So when they get back to us and we talk we’ll know more.”

The NFL could take up until Friday to make its decision on the location of the game. The first choice would be to keep the game in Tampa unless the aftermath of Hurricane Ian makes that impossible. The alternate location that could be in play by the NFL is Minnesota at US Bank Stadium, as the Vikings are out of the country this week.

“We can’t control the outside forces,” Bowles said. “Our thoughts are with the city of Tampa right now. Where we have to play, and hopefully it is Tampa and everything is fine – that means we’re not damaged too much. If we have to go play elsewhere we just have to focus and lock in. No one’s going to feel sorry for us. We have to be ready to play.”

If the Sunday Night Football game won’t be played in Tampa, it won’t be played in Miami the league has decided. The thinking there is that the NFL doesn’t want to use state and local resources in Miami, as those might be needed elsewhere in Florida to assist in the Hurricane Ian aftermath. So if it’s going to be played in Florida it will be in Tampa.

The last time the Bucs played the Chiefs was in Super Bowl LV at Raymond James Stadium at the conclusion of the 2020 season. Tampa Bay avenged an in-season, 24-21 loss to Kansas City in Week 12 of the 2020 season, which was also at Ray-Jay.

Bowles Discusses Bucs’ Move To Miami This Week

Bowles talked about moving the Bucs to the Dolphins practice facility this week to escape the hurricane’s path.

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

“It’s very different,” Bowles said. “First of all, our thoughts and hearts go out to everybody in Tampa that is still there, and hope they recover well and it doesn’t hit them very hard. That’s the biggest thing. What we do is really small entertainment for people that go through a lot of rough things. And hopefully we can provide that. So it’s bigger than just the football team number one. Number two, it’s just making sure that the players’ families are safe and the coaches’ families have stayed safe and that everybody on the staff is safe so they can concentrate on football. We brought a lot of them here. Everybody that wanted to come could come family-wise and otherwise – including pets. We’ve got to make sure those people are fine first because you can’t concentrate on football without taking care of your family.”

Before relocating to Miami, the Bucs first explored traveling to the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia.

“We were talking about West Virginia at first – we were trying to go there,” Bowles said. “A lot of teams go there to work out. They have good facilities and working out there and they can hold teams and hold a lot of things. But people would have still been away from their families. Even though their families could have come there, they would have been further away as far as the hotels are situated. So Miami came up and it looked like it wasn’t going to get hit as hard, or hopefully not. It was an easier trip – and people with pets, and grandparents and parents they could drive down to be closer to their families. So that played into it a lot.”