On notice.
For Joe, there was no question that the loss to Buffalo was Todd Bowles’ worst-coached game this year. Easily.
Punting when no one in their right mind should have punted, allowing the matador defense the of the Bucs to be on the field when the Bucs needed a stop. That was the most egregious error Bowles made.
Doing nothing about the kickoff coverage debacle was nearly as bad.
Joe cannot remember any team averaging 39 yards a return in a game unless they had just one, maybe two kick returns. That wasn’t the case Sunday.
Bowles after the game told Joe he “talked about” just kicking the ball out of bounds to prevent returns. That never happened. Meanwhile, Buffalo was starting drives at midfield, or in Bucs territory.
Joe still isn’t sure what Bowles was waiting on. Maybe he wanted Buffalo to set a kick return record first?
The kick team was so bad, Bowles earlier this week vowed changes. And apparently, the kick team is on notice.
Bowles today was asked if there may be practice squad guys promoted to play on the kickoff team. Bowles said all options are on the table.
“We’re trying different guys in different spots,” Bowles said. “We’ll move some guys around, and if worse comes to worst, we’ll try to kick it out [of bounds].
“But it’s got to get better – we’ll work on that this week, and that’s what we’ve been focusing on.”
On Monday, Bowles said guys on the kickoff team didn’t want to tackle. Good grief, you have one job and that is to tackle! Holy cow.
If those culprits were only on special teams, Joe would have launched them before the flight home touched ground at TPA. You can’t tell Joe there aren’t dudes out there hungry for a job in the NFL who wouldn’t want to tackle in order to get an NFL check.
Maybe launching a couple of players might snap the Bucs out of their funk? This team, specifically the defense the past two weeks, needs to snap out of it. Immediately.
Here comes Sean McVay and Matt Stafford!