INTRO: I had the chance to sit down with Todd Bowles for a very compelling, one hour interview this week. I learned a lot about Tampa Bay’s head coach and defensive play-caller that I didn’t know before. So get ready to go inside the mind of the Bucs’ defensive mastermind and find out what’s going on with his sideline smile – that smile that might drive you crazy.

FAB 1. Behind The Smile Of Todd Bowles

Admit it. You want to see Todd Bowles show more passion and energy on the sidelines.

You would love to see Bowles erupt the way that Jon Gruden and Bruce Arians did on refs who blew calls that went against the Bucs. Hey, both Gruden and Arians won Super Bowls in Tampa Bay, so maybe it’s okay to lose your cool and scream a little, right?

Instead, Bowles patrols the sidelines with his arms crossed in a stoic fashion. And instead of screaming, he smiles. And it drives you crazy.

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today

But on the inside Bowles is screaming.

And passionately yelling.

And energetically erupting.

But only for a millisecond.

Because Bowles is also thinking, and plotting, and planning and scheming for what’s next.

He has to.

“I can get emotional at times,” Bowles said. “I can get frustrated. But I have to come right back. I have to come right back. It’s different. If I get so emotional and panic then I can’t think the game like I want to think the game.

“It’s on the inside … but the smile – for me it’s all about the smile. That smile says 50 different things. It can be, ‘I can’t f*cking believe this!’ It can be, ‘I’m happy.’ It can be ‘You’re full of sh*t, ref!’ It can be an array of things. It’s different for me, but it works for our defense because if I don’t panic, they (the players) never panic and they feel like they always have a chance to win the game.”

Bucs cornerback Zyon McCollum, who is one of Bowles’ favorites (yes, he has favorites), recently said on a Pewter Report Podcast that he’s never seen Bowles panic. So in my recent, hour-long sit-down interview with Bowles, I asked him why he doesn’t panic.

“Because if I panic, they panic,” Bowles said. “And you can’t have that on the sidelines. That goes back to when I was coaching at Grambling. I had a freshman secondary and I yelled and screamed and they got at frazzled and it didn’t do any good. I was like, ‘Aw, shit. I can’t do that.’

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today

“They go by me. I yell at them all week in practice, but on game day it’s about the next play. It’s about what can you do better? I don’t have five-star players behind [our starters] six deep where I can say, ‘Get ‘em out there! You go in!’ We’ve got everybody for the year. We have to trust each other. They are going to make a mistake. I’m going to make a mistake. But the panic part … okay, what, where, when, why and how can we fix it? That’s all we’re in to right there.”

Not panicking is important. Just look at last year when the Bucs were 4-7 in late November after losing six of seven games at midseason. It looked like Tampa Bay was not going to make the playoffs and that Bowles might get fired.

Instead, Bowles’ calm, steady approach kept a young Bucs team focused and together. In my 29 years of covering the Bucs, I had seen Tampa Bay teams come apart at the seams as a season spirals out of control during the Raheem Morris, Greg Schiano and Lovie Smith years. Even a couple of years during Gruden’s tenure.

But last year’s Bowles team never came unraveled, and that was the key to winning five of its last six games and finishing 9-8 and winning a third straight NFC South title.

“We were [4-7] but the games we lost were due to stupidity,” Bowles said. “The Houston game and the Atlanta game came down to the last two minutes. We didn’t execute what we needed to execute, and we had a lot of growing pains last year. We had a lot of young guys. But we knew down the stretch we’d have a shot, and we were right there. Once they got their experience and everybody calmed down we played and they came out the other side.”

With his job on the line, Bowles and Tampa Bay had to win at Carolina in Week 18 to finish 9-8 and avoid a losing season. The Bucs defense responded with a shutout for their leader in a 9-0 victory. Bowles never panicked against the Panthers, even as his offense struggled mightily with a wounded Baker Mayfield under center.

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today

“That’s life – you can’t worry about it,” Bowles said. “We were in the driver’s seat towards the end of the season, late in the season, and we had to win one of two games. Obviously, you want to win the first one to get in, but we didn’t win the first one. So that was a desperation game for us, but it’s kind of like that every week – Week 1, Week 6, Week 7, Week 10, Week 12 – they’re all important. You want to get off to a fast start at the beginning, it’s better to be lucky than be good. In the middle, you better be prepared to play with your backups because there are going to be a lot of people hurt. In the end, you’ve got to be able to see the finish line and you’ve got to be focused on it. Everybody has to be on the same page and you have to be go in there and get it.

“It varies every year. If you start fast, it means nothing if you don’t finish. If you start slow, and you finish fast, that’s great. But you want to maintain a steady balance. They are big wins because they happen that week and then you have to move on. They’re all big games when you win them or when you lose them. It’s about how you lose them and what you can take away from them the next week. It’s even more so when you win and what you can take from that.”

In his first two years as the Bucs head coach, Bowles won a division championship with a very old, aging team in 2022 and then again with a very young squad in 2023. In 2024, Bowles will be coaching with his third different offensive coordinator. Bowles isn’t panicking, and he believes that the Bucs have actually leveled up with Liam Coen calling the offensive plays this year.

Bowles heads into 2024 with raised expectations after the Bucs advanced to the NFC Divisional playoffs last year. He’s smiles as he talks about the upcoming season because he really likes his group of young Buccaneers. I mean, really likes this team.

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

“It’s the NFL – you’re not playing any Division III teams,” Bowles said. “You are playing someone every week that is going to have a 4.3 or 4.4 receiver, that is going to have a great defensive line, that is going to have a quarterback that can either throw or run, they are going to have weapons that you’re going to have to stop, and linebackers that are coming. So how well can you do your job? That’s what we try to stress. How well can we do our job and trust the guy next to us?

“Then it’s how well do you know the scheme? If the answer is ‘Not enough,’ then we’ll cut it back for you. If you can handle it, then we’ll give you some more. We kind of go that way. We feel like we have a very good group. They are very tough-minded. It’s a mental game. It’s a very mental game. They are mentally tough. We understand the road ahead of us and we’re excited for it.”

Bowles hopes that when you see him smiling on the sidelines this year it’s the good, happy kind of smile that comes from a defensive masterpiece of a game plan like the kind that occurred in big wins against Green Bay, Jacksonville, Carolina and Philadelphia down the stretch.

But if the Bucs are in the heat of battle and things are looking grim, understand that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to Bowles’ smile.

FAB 2. Liam Coen Is On Todd Bowles’ Level – And That’s A Good Thing

Former Bucs offensive coordinator Dave Canales and head coach Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles has a lot of respect for former offensive coordinator Dave Canales, who left the team after one year to become the head coach in Carolina. Part of the reason was because Canales was the lone one who signed up for the job last year when most of the league believed Bowles was a dead man walking in 2023.

Coming off an 8-9 season and a home Wild Card playoff loss, and with Kyle Trask as the lone QB on Tampa Bay’s roster after Tom Brady’s retirement, most of the candidates the Bucs interviewed for the offensive coordinator vacancy declined to work with Bucs because they thought Bowles might get fired. Canales came to Tampa Bay with bright ideas, but absolutely zero play-calling experience and experience installing an offense. Yet he did an admirable job.

But Bowles was forced to have most practices in the offseason and in training camp feature “call-it” periods that weren’t scripted so that Canales could get a feel for actual, live play-calling before the season opener at Minnesota. While that helped prepare Canales, the lack of scripting plays didn’t give the Bucs defense enough of the looks it needed to see.

A second straight division title and a big win over Philadelphia in the playoffs boosted Bowles’ job security and the Bucs weren’t desperate to hire the first offensive coordinator candidate who was truly interested in the job this time around. Bowles was thrilled when Coen took the job because he had two years of play-calling experience in the SEC at Kentucky, in addition to coming from the Sean McVay coaching tree.

The Rams offense had given Bowles defense fits over the years with so much shifting and motion, and running different plays out of the same formation. So credit Bowles for leaning into a scheme that has been so difficult to defend with a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality.

Bucs OC Liam Coen – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

In the OTAs, Bowles has noticed how the Bucs offense has leveled up from more of an elementary unit to an advanced unit this offense. (That’s my interpretation and characterization reading between the lines, by the way).

“In the beginning it’s hard for an offensive coordinator, especially when you are incorporating new things,” Bowles said of Coen. “You have to go through the basic building blocks. The first half of phases I and II, and the first half of OTAs was part of the building blocks. But once you’ve got a feel and got a hang of it, I thought [the play-calling] was very good once all the things came together.

“Of course you have to do that in pads, but he has a wide variety of things he likes to do and he’s very aggressive – whether it’s run or throwing. I think he’s an extremely intelligent guy. He has a good feel for the game. He’s kind of similarly to me on offense as I am defensively. He’s good at scheming and how it all comes together, so I like what I see.”

The Bucs defense is really getting challenged in practice now. Coen’s volume of run plays is immense compared to last year. The constant shifts and motions are more akin to what Bowles’ unit will face on game days rather than last training camp when Canales did very little shifting and hardly motioned at all.

Coen’s experience calling plays comes through in the fact that he’s set up the Bucs defense with plays that are like jabs from a boxer before the knockout punch is delivered. Sometimes Coen leads with a knockout hook, like the first play of an 11-on-11 period on Day 2 of mini-camp when receiver Rakim Jarrett torched new cornerback Bryce Hall for a deep touchdown down the sidelines.

“He can do that very well and he’s very intelligent,” Bowles said. “Liam is very aggressive when you think he’s not going to be aggressive. He’s not going to succumb the down and he’s going to constantly going for the kill – intelligently – and I really like that.”

Rams HC Sean McVay, Bucs OC Liam Coen and Rams QB Matthew Stafford – Photo by: USA Today

It’s interesting to note that both the Bucs and Falcons both hired offensive coordinators from the McVay coaching tree this offseason as Atlanta also hired Zac Robinson from the L.A. Rams. Seeing a very similar offense in practice every day over the summer could help the Bucs when it comes to facing the Falcons’ new offense this season. And it will be interesting to see which version of the Rams offense winds up being more potent this year – the one in Tampa Bay or the one in Atlanta.

“There are only about three or four schemes in the league, so you kind of see it every week anyway,” Bowles said. “Sean has a wide variety of people coming from his tree, whether it’s Green Bay or Cincinnati or all of those guys. You see them anyway, so it’s not a surprise that you’re going to see that type of offense.

“The nicks in it and the kinks in it will be a little different (in Atlanta) so we’ll have to play that as it goes. We play them early, so we’ll see a couple of games and we’ll see what they’re doing, and they’ll see what we’re doing. We’ll see how similar it is going forward.”

One thing that irked Bowles last year was that the Bucs never scored a touchdown on their first possession all season. Not once in 19 games.

That will change in 2024 with Coen at the helm, and we saw exactly what happens down the stretch when Bowles and his defense had an early lead.

Bucs 34, Packers 20
Bucs 30, Jaguars 12
Bucs 9, Panthers 0
Bucs 32, Eagles 9

Just give the man a lead and the results speak for themselves.

FAB 3. Inside The Mind Of A Defensive Mastermind

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

Sixty-year old Todd Bowles had a total knee replacement surgery this offseason. Due to his rehab and recovery, he had to forego any traveling or vacation this summer.

So you would think that Bowles spent extra time watching film this summer as a result, right?

“Actually, I didn’t watch any film this summer,” Bowles said. “This is the first time really in two years – I’ve had to hire a staff in the offseason then [in 2023] and I had to hire a staff this year in the offseason. So it’s kind of went in a circle where I didn’t get a break for two years. So this year I needed the rest for my knee, I needed it for the mental part of things. It was a good break for me. This was the first time I haven’t watched any film during the summer. I typically don’t watch too much film in the summer. I’ll catch a few games on NFL Network that are interesting when they show the postseason or the flashback games. If they are interesting, I’ll watch.”

Bowles had surgery in late May and it’s been a long, hard road of rehab. Instead of being confined to a golf cart at practice like he was during the OTAs and mini-camp, Bowles can now walk around with a bit of a limp.

“That was huge, having [surgery] when I did,” Bowles said. “If I had gotten it done in the summer I would have been done for training camp, so I’m a lot better now. It’s tough because you have a job to do. I only missed three days since I had it.

“They don’t tell you about when the [pain] block [medication] wears off after the first two days. After the first day or two – the pain you are in the three days after that is unbearable. Once that got started, I had a great PT team. They have helped me tremendously. It’s just constant work, but it’s gotten a lot easier and it’s a lot more tolerable.”

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

Bowles spent all spring watching film on the Bucs’ opponents like he usually does. He explained – at length – his process of watching film and devising the different defensive schemes in my sit-down interview with him. So let’s go inside the mind of the Bucs’ defensive mastermind.

“I do all my film work in the spring,” Bowles said. “You try to see when the schedule comes out, but you spend all spring trying to self-scout yourself – what we did bad, what we did good, what we have to change and how we can best put guys in the right position? How can make things easier for them to learn? How can we make things easier for them to see? We do that part and then when we get closer to the draft and then the schedule comes out after the draft.

“You know the first four games – really the first three – you try to do a bunch of homework on. You look at all the tape just to see, and if you played them before what may change. When you play somebody at the beginning [of the season] they look a lot different than in the middle or the end of the season.”

Bowles watches all of the games and collaborates with his staff, including co-defensive coordinators Kacy Rodgers and Larry Foote. But he also does a lot of film study in solitude with a relentless and meticulous approach.

“We try to go through all of that, and then I try to do it myself,” Bowles said. “You watch game after game after game after game until something clicks. If it doesn’t click you keep watching. Then you get up the next day and you watch it again. And I watch it again, and I watch it again, and I watch it again. You get ideas that you put in your head about what you want to do, and what you’ll try to do and go from there. You just file it away. I’ll put stuff on the [white] board, take pictures of it and then erase it. Then you kind of put it all together.”

I asked Bowles where he thinks of some of the exotic looks he comes up with. Like lining up Vita Vea, Calijah Kancey and Shaq Barrett as linebackers against Detroit in the playoffs and having Yaya Diaby, Lavonte David, Joe Tryon-Shoyinka and Devin White all line up as defensive linemen. See for yourself in the link below.

Does Bowles think of these exotic schemes in the shower, in the car on the ride to work, while eating lunch in the cafeteria?

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles and FS Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“All of the above,” Bowles said. “You sleep light and you think of stuff. You get frustrated and you think of stuff. You talk to the other coaches and they see things. We’re always doing homework. We look at college. We look at high school. We look at pro ball. When it comes we’re like, ‘Hey, this fits us. We can do this.’ It’s a great collaboration and everyone has a voice. It’s non-stop football thinking.

“We erase the board and tear up the board more than anyone. I know I do. If I keep something up on the board for more than two days that’s a long time. It’s completely full, you take pictures of it, then it’s erased. Then more stuff comes up. If I think about it, then it becomes difficult because I only think about it for me initially. Then I think about it for the coaches and it has to make sense for everybody.”

Bowles, a former Super Bowl-winning safety for the Washington Redskins, uses an interesting method when drawing up his defensive plays. Instead of focusing on the defensive front at the line of scrimmage first and working backwards, Bowles starts with the safeties and the secondary with the coverages and works forward.

“For us it’s all about false reads for the quarterback,” Bowles said. “So the disguise and the look pre-snap and the look at the snap is critical to take away the first read. The rush can’t be a factor if he’s just going back and getting the ball out in rhythm.

“So, we start from the back, or I do anyway. The position coaches do their job, but I start from the back and work my way up – even though we try to stop the run first and make you one-dimensional. What did the quarterback see [pre-snap]? Where is he going with the ball? What do we have that can take that way and still play the run? I kind of work that way.”

Bucs ILB KJ Britt and Eagles QB Jalen Hurts – Photo by: USA Today

The whole goal for Bowles and his defense on every down is to have the offense play on their terms. That means getting the opposing offense to make a check or an audible at the line of scrimmage. That’s when the offensive playbook typically shrinks and gives Bowles and his unit a better idea of what play is coming.

“They get four or five plays they can check to based on the look,” Bowles said. “We want our [pre-snap] look to put them in a play that we can take advantage of. ‘If we give this look, they kind of do that.’ It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game.”

The first mouse up for Bowles on this year’s schedule is Washington rookie Jayden Daniels, last year’s Heisman Trophy winner and the No. 2 overall pick in the draft.

Bowles has had his share of struggles against rookie quarterbacks in recent years from San Francisco’s Brock Purdy two years ago to Houston’s C.J. Stroud last year. But he also tormented Carolina rookie Bryce Young and Tennessee rookie Will Levis during the 2023 season.

The mind of Tampa Bay’s defensive mastermind has been working overtime on Daniels and Washington since the schedule was released in mid-May. And after a summer break, it has resumed and won’t stop until September 8 when the talented rookie and the Commanders come to town.

FAB 4. Bucs Will Be Washington-Ready, Ready To Face Jayden Daniels

Ex-Bucs HC Lovie Smith – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Todd Bowles wasn’t coaching in Tampa Bay in 2015 when rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota and Tennessee came to town and threw four touchdowns and had a perfect 158.3 QB rating against Lovie Smith and his overmatched Bucs defense. But he remembers that game well.

Smith admitted after that 42-14 loss to the Titans that the Bucs weren’t “Tennessee-ready.”

That was an understatement.

As it turned out, the defensive-minded Smith didn’t bother to watch much Oregon offense, which featured Mariota running a ton of RPO (run-pass option) plays. The same kind of plays the Bucs defense got torched on in the 2015 season opener.

Bowles admits that he’s not only watched a ton of Kliff Kingsbury’s offense, as Kingsbury is Dan Quinn’s offensive coordinator in Washington, he’s also watched all of Jayden Daniels’ LSU games to get a feel for the Commanders’ new quarterback.

Commanders QB Jayden Daniels – Photo by: USA Today

“He’s a hell of an athlete,” Bowles said. “I’ve watched him in college. I’ve seen his tape and everything else. He’s one of the few that can run it or throw it and beat you in the pocket or outside of it. Whether it’s a designed run or a scramble, whether it’s a back shoulder fade or a deep fade it’s going to be a challenge. He’s a good player.

Washington will only play Daniels six or seven series in three preseason games to protect him from injury and preserve him for the regular season. The plays will be vanilla in nature and Bowles knows that Daniels will be capable of doing far more damage in the season opener – likely with some kind of a surprise attack.

“It’s dangerous because it’s the first game,” Bowles said. “Whether he’s a rookie or not, the first game brings many surprises. The first two or three weeks of the season you don’t know who you are – nobody does. You know what you want to be, but you don’t know who you are yet.

“That’s going to be fundamentals, technique and reading – and you better be ready to adjust if they do some things that we’re not going to expect. And they will, and we understand that. You have to be able to adjust quick and handle it on the fly. We’ll be ready.”

FAB 5. Todd Bowles May Be Closer To Beating The Lions, 49ers Than You Might Think

Bucs ILB KJ Britt and Eagles QB Jalen Hurts – Photo by: USA Today

Todd Bowles absolutely dismantled the Philadelphia offense in a much-anticipated rematch against the Eagles in last year’s Wild Card playoffs. After losing 25-11 at home in Week 3 as Philly ran roughshod over his defense – literally, as the Bucs surrendered 201 yards on the ground to the Eagles – Bowles was going to be damned if that happened again.

He devised a masterpiece of a game plan against Philadelphia in the rematch – one that rivaled the scheme his defense executed to perfection against Kansas City in a 31-9 victory in Super Bowl LV. The Bucs destroyed the Eagles, 32-9, holding Philly’s ground game to just 42 yards on 15 carries and even registering a safety.

The genius was to deploy a five-man defensive front using three or four defensive tackles, and Tampa Bay also shut down Philly’s tush push on a two-point conversion, which was the coup de grâce.

“We liked our game plan,” Bowles said. “Obviously the first time we played them they ran for over 200 yards. That did not sit well with us. That did not sit well with me. They are a very talented team. In fact, across the board on both sides of the ball, they are probably one of the three most talented teams in the league if you look at it on paper. So we changed up some things in the front and we talked them out of some things and kind of switched up some things based on what we saw and it worked out for us.”

No matter what the Eagles tried, it didn’t work. Yet everything the Bucs defense did seemed to work. In the Bucs’ biggest game of the season to date, Bowles was in the zone as a play-caller.

Bucs HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today

“It’s good to see when the guys are having fun,” Bowles said. “You always try to set them up for success. It doesn’t go like that 90% of the time you draw it up. But those guys were focused and they came together at the right time at the end of the year. Guys were playing with confidence and they trusted each other. We knew it was going to be a tough game. We didn’t know we were going to win 32-9, but it was still a tough ball game. It was just a credit to the guys for getting ready to play.”

Bowles and the Bucs defense didn’t have the same type of success in the following week’s revenge game at Detroit. The third time was not the charm when it came to facing Jared Goff and his Lions, who prevailed 31-23 to advance to the NFC Championship Game.

With the Lions on deck in Week 2 after the Commanders game in the season opener, Bowles has done plenty of self-scouting and has watched both losses to Detroit over and over and over again. He’s closer to beating Goff and the Lions offense than you might think.

“The first time we played them, we blew coverages and we missed tackles,” Bowles said. “It had nothing to do with solving the puzzle. That was all fundamentals. The second time we played them, they made a few plays and we messed up a few things. But it’s just about playing sound defense.

“When a team has a lot of weapons it’s not really a puzzle you have to solve. You have to play fundamentally sound football, and technically sound football and then we have to find a way to make plays. We [as coaches] have to find a way to help them more to make those type of plays.”

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles and Lions QB Jared Goff – Photo by: USA Today

Bowles said that the failures of his defense against the Lions were more about execution than game-planning, and that has him encouraged. Remember that the Bucs and Lions were tied at 23-23 heading into the fourth quarter.

“The second time around, they were just better than us,” Bowles said. “The first time they were banged up and we were banged up. But you have to win those games. Dan did a good job of getting them ready to win those games and we didn’t do a good enough job.

“I have to do a better job of that – of making sure we need to see everything we need to see and then we just have to play. We don’t worry about last year, but we understand how we got beat and why we got beat. We just move forward from there. They’ll have some new wrinkles, and we’ll have some new wrinkles and we’ll play again.”

Bowles is looking forward to beating the Lions just as much as he’s looking forward to beating the 49ers – a team that has beaten the Bucs in back-to-back years in San Francisco, 35-7 in 2022, and 27-14 last year. San Fran has a very smart, capable quarterback in Brock Purdy and a ton of dangerous weapons in wide receivers Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk, tight end George Kittle and all-purpose running back Christian McCaffrey.

But the weapons aren’t the biggest obstacle for Bowles’ defense.

Bucs HC Todd Bowles and 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan – Photo by: USA Today

“Their strength really is the offensive line,” Bowles said. “That’s really where you start. We were in the game last year. We were going down to tie it and we missed it. We have to stop the big plays from them. They do it in so many ways. A lot of it is catch-and-run, and then we fall asleep downfield. If we can stop the big plays, we’ll give ourselves a chance. The big plays hurt us. They hit a bomb down the sidelines, and we missed some tackles here and there. We got misaligned on a running play for a touchdown. We have to stop the big plays, and they have so many guys that can do so many things.

“When you play a team like that you don’t worry about the people, you just worry about the scheme, and you just play. The players and they way they play them and the way they put them out, they are interchangeable. So you can’t worry about the [jersey] numbers. You know who they are, but you have to find out what position they can hurt you [from]. Then you just have to go play sound football.”

It’s interesting to note that the Bucs jettisoned two former starters on defense who were the most likely to make mental errors in middle linebacker Devin White and cornerback Carlton Davis III. Bowles absolutely loves their replacements, K.J. Britt and Zyon McCollum, and raves about their football IQs.

A smarter Bucs defense that cuts down on mistakes will give Tampa Bay a much better chance of slowing down Detroit’s and San Francisco’s high-powered attacks. Bowles can’t wait for the rematch against the NFC’s two toughest teams to prove that his team is on par with the Lions and 49ers.

And hopefully better.

“We play everybody that played in the championship games and the Super Bowl, which is good,” Bowles said. “When you come in first place, you get a first-place schedule. You embrace it. You look forward to it and you prepare for it. We’ll be ready. We’ll be excited to play them again.”