Granted he didn’t have the chance to hire his own staff,
Too much has been made of this. Tampa has one of the largest coaching staffs in the league with 25+. Bowles has retained over 75% of those coaches. The common refrain amongst at least one of the dumbasses who has defended Leftwich all year is Bowles was stuck with Arians staff. The reality is Arians and Bowles have a lot of the same NFL connections, meaning they would work with similar people. That is proving itself to be true. Bowles didn’t clean house, not even firing the whole offensive staff. He fired an inept OC and a handful of offensive position coaches from a woefully underperforming offense.
You and others are assuming if BA had immediately stepped down, Bowles wouldn’t have retained Leftwich. That simply isn’t true. Bowles would not have fired the guy his mentor has been raving about for years and put Brady with a new OC. Prior to this season, there were those of us that didn’t think Lefty was great - but didn’t think he was this inept at his job. I’m sure Bowles was in that group. We all underestimated Arians’ fingerprint on the offense and overestimated Leftwich’s role in the high-scoring offenses, even going back to Winston at QB. Leftwich was simply horrendous when he actually got to run the show on his own.
The frustrating thing is that we already know Todd Bowles isn’t a good head coach
Great coordinator but if the 2022 Bucs wasn’t a big enough my statement on him that I don’t know what is. He’s got to feel awful deep down as I’m sure he did t expect it to be this shitty so quickly
I just posted this comment after the article in the news about HC Bowles changing the culture:
Bowles might be the wrong guy for the job but trans don’t work like you are describing. I am sure all the coaches addressed the “Super Bowl hangover” because Bowles, the HC, said it publicly. That happens when they are not getting what they want from the players. It’s like shaming them, sort of a last ditch effort.
This season is exactly what you’d expect from this circumstance; a team with less talent, thrown together coaches starts to lose and finger pointing and conflict all around. They will not go this because it’s the NFL but if the object was longer term success they wouldn’t just be blowing up the coaching staff they’d be largely starting over on the roster
they probably think that they can perform in a very bad division if Bowles can just turn around the defense even though the D ie part of the problem
I am disappointed in PR for toeing the company line as much as they do. When Jon Ledyard was here he didn't do that -- he trusted his eyes, he put in the analytical work, and he was a straight shooter. I lot of the "reporting" we are seeing lately feels like PR exchanging access to information inside One Buc Place for agreeing to serve as an extended arm of Bucs PR, printing their talking points as if they made sense even when they don't. It is simply not credible that PR really believes that this season was a success because we won our weak-xxx division. When you just won the super bowl and still have brady, the goal was never winning the weakest division in football. But PR parrots the line coming from somewhere in One Buc Place that it made sense for Bowles to not fire Leftwich in mid-season "because Bowles was betting on his defense and Brady to be good enough to win the division, and that bet paid off." (that is not a direct quote, but it is a paraphrase of what PR has been touting). That's hogwash. I expect PR to be honest with us and that is not honest. If that is what PR is hearing from One Buc, then they need to criticize it and say that it is hogwash -- namely that that is a loser's mentality OR call it out for what it really is: that Bowles didn't care enough about winning this year to made tough choices, so he decided at mid-season to flush this season down the drain even though tens or hundreds of thousands of Bucs fans pay good money to attend games and waste their weekends rooting for a team whose coach isn't even trying to win the Super Bowl this year. When faced with a choice that would improve our chances of winning significantly (by firing Leftwich) but might offend Arians or make it awkward to hire a new OC in 2023 (if the Leftwich replacement in mid-season hadn't panned out), he chose to play it safe and flush the season. Bowles seems like a nice guy but those actions suggest he does not have the heart of a lion (a winner), but of a Dungy type who perpetually gets crushed by the Sean Payton's and Andy Reid's and Sean McVay's and Bill Bellicek's of the league. And meanwhile he keeps the Special Teams Coach even though we have been near worst in the league in Special Teams for the past three seasons.
Interestingly, Bowles seems to be intellectually honest in assessing his own defense -- he doesn't usually BS about that, even though he won't call out individual players, which I understand. But he seems either too weak to coach an entire team with that standard. THat reminds me of Dungy, who always thought it was OK if the offense sucked as long as the D was good. Dungy never held the offense accountable, and Bowles failed to hold our OC accountable when it still could have made a difference, and has now also failed to hold our special teams coach accountable.
@seekpar - great point. I agree. He had a whole season to set his culture. I didn’t realize you only get to do that in the offseason? He’s lucky he gets to reset everything for another season. I’m not sure he deserves that or that it will work out for the franchise.
I am disappointed in PR for toeing the company line as much as they do. When Jon Ledyard was here he didn't do that -- he trusted his eyes, he put in the analytical work, and he was a straight shooter. I lot of the "reporting" we are seeing lately feels like PR exchanging access to information inside One Buc Place for agreeing to serve as an extended arm of Bucs PR, printing their talking points as if they made sense even when they don't. It is simply not credible that PR really believes that this season was a success because we won our weak-xxx division. When you just won the super bowl and still have brady, the goal was never winning the weakest division in football. But PR parrots the line coming from somewhere in One Buc Place that it made sense for Bowles to not fire Leftwich in mid-season "because Bowles was betting on his defense and Brady to be good enough to win the division, and that bet paid off." (that is not a direct quote, but it is a paraphrase of what PR has been touting). That's hogwash. I expect PR to be honest with us and that is not honest. If that is what PR is hearing from One Buc, then they need to criticize it and say that it is hogwash -- namely that that is a loser's mentality OR call it out for what it really is: that Bowles didn't care enough about winning this year to made tough choices, so he decided at mid-season to flush this season down the drain even though tens or hundreds of thousands of Bucs fans pay good money to attend games and waste their weekends rooting for a team whose coach isn't even trying to win the Super Bowl this year. When faced with a choice that would improve our chances of winning significantly (by firing Leftwich) but might offend Arians or make it awkward to hire a new OC in 2023 (if the Leftwich replacement in mid-season hadn't panned out), he chose to play it safe and flush the season. Bowles seems like a nice guy but those actions suggest he does not have the heart of a lion (a winner), but of a Dungy type who perpetually gets crushed by the Sean Payton's and Andy Reid's and Sean McVay's and Bill Bellicek's of the league. And meanwhile he keeps the Special Teams Coach even though we have been near worst in the league in Special Teams for the past three seasons.
Interestingly, Bowles seems to be intellectually honest in assessing his own defense -- he doesn't usually BS about that, even though he won't call out individual players, which I understand. But he seems either too weak to coach an entire team with that standard. THat reminds me of Dungy, who always thought it was OK if the offense sucked as long as the D was good. Dungy never held the offense accountable, and Bowles failed to hold our OC accountable when it still could have made a difference, and has now also failed to hold our special teams coach accountable.
SPOT ON!!!!
Ledyard, Trey, some of the best in the business calling it like it is, analysts, film break downs, etc.
Good for them they’ve moved on to better gigs.
SR wished he had their football acumen (let alone, their balls).
@bveghte - exactly! I couldn’t have said it any better. I respect SR’s research and knowledge, but it is frustrating that he hasn’t been as candid as he normally is. Someone at One Buc had him quiet down about Bowles during the the season. SR went from”Bowles has to be fired,” to “Leftwich is the problem.”
Not defending SR because don't know the actual circumstances, but just structurally speaking it would make sense that someone like SR (single team local coverage) would have to consider access MORE than most other outlets.
If we are being fair (lol), its also probably true that ZERO of us placed in the same position (ie livelihood tied to PR) make all of our editorial decisions without thinking about access. I mean, we all watched this season as a national reporter apologized to a player for efforts to cover a story. Right thing to do, but also tied to access to other players.
Worth watching this video. Aligns with Bowles comments about culture. Depressing. Watch D Smith on the bench
#Bucs recently released footage from their Week 14 game against the #49ers Tom Brady was mic'd up for a big homecoming-type of game for him in front of his friends and family. You can see him desperately trying to fire up a life-less team all game long. The end is just.
I agree that most if not all of us, if we were in the same position as PR staff, would struggle with this issue of balancing reporting with access. We all balance these things in our own work. I'm not trying to judge PR. I'm just calling out the issue and hoping to nudge them in the direction of a bit more candor. I realize they have a lot to balance.
I do think they can do better, though, without compromising access. Sitting by while the team flushed this season and calling it normal is, to me, underperforming as a journalist. Teams aren't supposed to willingly flush a season when they have Tom brady in his perhaps final year at QB. You're supposed to position the team to win. And not firing Leftwich and arguing that as long as you can win the division with a terrible OC, that that's reason enough to keep that terrible OC, is ridiculous. The other argument I read is that if he promoted someone internally to finish out the season, or brought someone in from the outside, that he would be obligated to keep that person in 2023 even if they also did a bad job. But I don't buy that. If Bowles had replaced Leftwich in mid-season, he could have said the replacement was to finish out the year and the team would re-evaluate during the off-season. That's what the Panthers did with their head coach. It could certainly be done with an OC.
To me this is just poor judgment skills or lack of strategic thinking by Bowles. Winners don't look for reasons why it's hard to win. They constantly rearrange puzzle pieces until they have a winning formula.
I don’t think they flushed the season. I think the team is in transition from a very good SB team to now a older, slower and less talented team that (IN PART because of a situation created by Brady & Arians ) was straddling coaches. Like having an interim coach or a mixture of coaches
That was a recipe for problems ESPECIALLY with Arians claiming the team (without Gronk Marpet etc) was most talented lol. As soon as they underperform all the finger pointing starts and so the best thing for Bowles at that point is arguably at odds with what fans would want (eg fire Leftwich mid season). If he does that and team stays the same people blame him. If he rolls with it he can credibly say “need to change the culture” and fire people.
if anyone is to blame it’s the management of the team although they were put in a tough spot by Brady and retirements and injuries and cap
sometimes the bill comes due
SR addressed this question in yesterday’s podcast. He did in the only I think he could. I really like SR and his work. And I can 100% appreciate that he can’t burn bridges at One Buc Place. He said that he does not carry water for Bowles and that he never, at any point in the season, said the organization would fire Bowles. And that’s true.l, because we all know that they give every HC 2 years. But… My question was why HE (SR) stopped saying Bowles should be fired? There was a good 2 to 3 weeks that SR was on the fire Bowles train. But I understand and I do appreciate that he addressed the question.
then how come Bowles didn’t meet privately with those players to reset expectations?
certainly these issues could have been addressed with the players he thought weren’t living up to his standards.
If it were that simple, don't you think he would've done that? And maybe he did and the guys just didn't change.
Sometimes you need a reset and an offseason to weed out the lower-effort guys.
If living off the super bowl, or not working as hard as expected were the case, then how come Bowles didn’t meet privately with those players to reset expectations? Bowles had the chance to instill new culture during the 2022 season, not beginning with the 2023 roster. Granted he didn’t have the chance to hire his own staff, but certainly these issues could have been addressed with the players he thought weren’t living up to his standards. Just like any other workplace. I’m prepared for the 2023 season to be a failure. IMHO the Bucs won’t even win 8 games in 2023. Wasted year except for the high draft pick.