{"id":319827,"date":"2025-08-26T20:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T20:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/319827\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T20:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T20:07:09","slug":"tampa-bay-bucs-coach-todd-bowles-to-watch-son-todd-bowles-jr-play-for-liu-vs-florida-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/319827\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Bucs coach Todd Bowles to watch son Todd Bowles Jr play for LIU vs Florida football"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a> coach Todd Bowles has an NFL season to prepare for, but will get to take a chance to shift from football coach to football dad for a night before the start of the 2025 NFL season.<\/p>\n

Bowles plans to be in the stands to watch his son, Todd Bowles Jr., play for Long Island University when Florida football<\/a> hosts LIU in its season opener on Saturday at The Swamp (7 p.m., SEC Network+).<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

A Tampa Bay Jesuit grad, the 6-foot-1, 195-pound Bowles Jr., began his college career at Rutgers before transferring to LIU in 2022. Bowles Jr. appeared in one game for LIU last season, making two tackles against TCU. He plays defensive back, like his father, who played seven seasons with the Washington Commanders and San Francisco 49ers (1986-93) before going on to a coaching career that has included head coaching stints with the New York Jets (2015-18) and Buccaneers (2022-present).<\/p>\n

It’s rare that Bowles gets to see his son play due to the NFL-college football crossover. It worked out since the Bucs don’t have a preseason game this wekeend before their season-opener on Sept. 7 at the Atlanta Falcons. The Florida Gators<\/a> opted to host LIU, an FCS opponent, to start the 2025 season after facing power four conference teams in openers in each of the last three seasons (Utah in 2022 and 2023 and Miami in 2024).<\/p>\n

“I haven\u2019t seen him play since last year, obviously, one time up in Long Island,” Bowles said. “But the fact that he\u2019s coming to Gainesville, I\u2019m just very excited to see him out there. So like a regular dad, I\u2019ll be happy just to see him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin Brockway is The Gainesville Sun\u2019s Florida<\/a> beat writer. Contact him at kbrockway@gannett.com. Follow him on X @KevinBrockwayG1. Read his coverage of the Gators\u2019 national championship basketball season in \u201cCHOMP-IONS!\u201d \u2014 a hardcover coffee-table collector\u2019s book from The Sun. Details at Florida<\/a>.ChampsBook.com<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: NFL coach coming to The Swamp to watch son play for LIU vs Florida football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles has an NFL season to prepare for, but will get to take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[6507,254,59374,211,9751,1301,7,7504,59375,21643,45121,216,255,6,252,704,250,59373,2597,2596,7763,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-319827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-2025-nfl-season","9":"tag-atlanta-falcons","10":"tag-bowles-jr","11":"tag-buccaneers","12":"tag-florida-football","13":"tag-florida-gators","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-football-coach","16":"tag-football-dad","17":"tag-liu","18":"tag-long-island-university","19":"tag-miami","20":"tag-new-york-jets","21":"tag-nfl","22":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","23":"tag-tampa-bay","24":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","25":"tag-tampa-bay-jesuit","26":"tag-tampabay","27":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers","28":"tag-todd-bowles","29":"tag-washington-commanders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115096875814320928","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}