Is this the end of a championship-winning team as we know it? The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have made one of the most ruthless offseason firings yet as they relieved OC Byron Leftwich of his duties, leaving the state of the team in question.
I’ve got to be honest and say that this really wasn’t the firing I was expecting the Buccaneers to make after their trainwreck 2022 season.
Sure, the offense took an absolute nosedive under Leftwich’s management as the Bucs had the league’s worst rushing offense (only 1,308 total rushing yards), the league’s 7th worst scoring offense (only 32 total TDs scored), and had one of the worst 3rd Down conversion percentages with just a 37% conversion rate on 246 total attempts.
In fact, the only thing the Bucs offense did well was passing as it had the league’s 5th best passing offense with 4,746 total yards picked up through the air, though that was done on an astronomically high 751 passing attempts.
Just for perspective on how much the Bucs overworked Tom Brady’s 45-year-old arm, the next highest passing attempts made by an NFL offense was the Los Angeles Chargers’ 711 attempted passes, which resulted in them gaining 4,791 total offensive yards. Who is the Chargers quarterback? Oh, that’s right, it’s the 24-year-old Justin Herbert…the very same quarterback that has one of the most powerful arms in NFL today.
So, I can see why the Bucs wanted to move on from Byron Leftwich’s schemes as with Tom Brady’s future uncertain and his chances of staying in Tampa Bay very slim, the team’s hierarchy probably wanted a fresh face designing new plays for Brady or a new quarterback.
But we can’t forget that Leftwich was running one of the league’s best offenses over the last three years, both with and without Tom Brady under center. In my humble opinion, seeing Leftwich go from a potential head coaching candidate for the Jaguars job to his couch in less than nine months after one sub-par season is a little harsh.
Yet, what has really surprised me is why Todd Bowles still has a job.
I hate to say this as Bowles seems like a really nice guy and is one of the most brilliant defensive minds in the NFL today, but the guy can’t coach a 53-man football team. From an outside perspective looking in, it seems like he’s too nice/lenient on the players and they took advantage by slacking off in their on-field responsibilities.
I don’t know how else to explain the Buccaneers being the 12 worst team in the league with accumulated penalties (99 total penalties incurred) this season.
Nevertheless, the Bucs 8-9 season and 0-1 playoff stint has not helped Bowles make his case as an elite NFL head coach as his career record is now 34-50 with the Dolphins, Jets and Bucs, while his playoff history is just 0-1.
He still only has one winning season as a HC (2015 with the Jets), he has a career .405 winning percentage, he has a losing playoff history (0-1), and he has three seasons of 5 wins and below (2016, 2017, and 2018 with the Jets), which also doesn’t help his case.
Plus, seeing how the previous head coach, Bruce Arians, not only had a 31-18 (.633 winning %) record with the Bucs, won the 2021 NFC South Division title, and won the 2020 Super Bowl with the team, but also has an overall coaching record of 80-48-1 (.624 winning %), is a 2X NFL Coach of the Year, and has just one losing record (7-9 record in 2019 with Bucs) in nine NFL seasons, it’s easy to see why Bucs fans might not be too happy with the transition.
And even more so with Arians still apart of the team in an executive capacity.
Still, none of these coaching changes really matter if the great TB12 decides to move on from Tampa as that would decisively end Bucs Super Bowl hopes, and most likely forcing the franchise to go into a full rebuild.
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