Yes, the Bucs need a talent upgrade on defense, but how much of an upgrade?
Bucs officials will keep that answer secret until after March free agency and April’s NFL Draft. Understandably so.
When the Bucs drafted Emeka Egbuka last year in Round 1, it sort of fulfilled a Todd Bowles prophecy a few weeks before that draft at the NFL Owners meetings.
There, Bowles said he would be just fine drafting a receiver because he’s learned scoring is a winning priority.
“Being a defensive coach, I learned that you win by scoring points,” Bowles said. “I don’t ever want to bypass a very good offensive player. I can figure things out enough on defense to keep us competitive.
“I would like to have some defensive players if that presented itself, but by no means will I bypass a very good offensive player just to satisfy my needs on defense.
“We can figure out how to keep the score down, but you can’t figure out a way to keep scoring points, especially if your horses go down. You can never have enough horses on offense. “
Joe applauded every element of that six-sentence Bowles rant. Bravo! However, the Bucs last year didn’t “figure out how to keep the score down.”
With Vita Vea, Lavonte David, Antoine Winfield, Calijah Kancey and Haason Reddick on the 2025 roster, the Bucs hardly were counting on “misfits” to win on defense. But frankly, a band of misfit-type players across the board might have produced better results.
Joe is using the word “misfit” because former Chargers and wrongfully-booted Raiders general manager Tom Telesco talked about when he was a member of the Colts’ front office, Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian had a philosophy of paying big for offensive players and hoping to fill out the defense successfully with “misfit” type players.
Telesco, speaking on SiriusXM NFL Radio, talked about how Polian and then-Colts head coach sought misfit types that either fit Tony Dungy’s defense or were guys Dungy could adjust to. That almost echoed Bowles’ line about figuring things out on defense while loading up talent on offense.
Will the Bucs have a similar offseason mindset this year? Or will fixing the Tampa Bay defense with blue chip talent be a priority?
Teams like the Cowboys and Bengals have overloaded on offense in recent years and that blew up in their faces.
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