Tampa Bay Buccaneers Head Coach Todd Bowles spoke to the media the day after the Bucs’ game against the Washington Commanders in the NFC Wild Card Round of the 2024 NFL Season.
If noon, but I get a chance to meet with you, Jason Lighter from the Glaziers.
Not at this time. No, I just met with the team. What was your message to Obviously proud of the work they had done this year, wasn't good enough. The only team is gonna be happy is the team to win the Super Bowl. To start the little things right starts with the off season. Once they come back from break, we gotta build it up from ground zero once again. You know a lot of guys in that room, free agents be lying. If we say we're gonna keep everybody, or everybody's gonna stay for whatever reason, it's gonna be turnover. So when they come back, just understand we're starting from ground zero. We gotta do the little things right to start the season all over again. We're not gonna pick up where we left off. And you know, proud of the effort, proud of the organization, the people in the building, from the general manager to the scouting them and equipment trainers, everybody, nutrition is uh, the whole the whole gang. And we just gotta do a better job, coaching, better job playing making plays at the little time, coaching it right the best time, and you know, just come back with a chip on my shoulders.
What area would you like to see? What areas would you like to see that better?
Right now? All the areas as I dive into it. We haven't dived into the off season yet. But I can name a myriad of things, and it be too long a list to go into right now. But whatever it takes to get us to the next step.
What's it?
What's it the top of your group? Like I said, I don't have a top of the list. I'm still fresh off the loss right now. There's a lot of things I can single out, but I wouldn't say they were the top of the list until I sat down and really charged 'em and looked at 'em. And once the weeks go on, we'll start to get the hold of that and see what we wanted to do.
How the end fort was, You didn't I understand what ginger?
He didn't have years of the impact when he's had in years past.
Well, people would come to expect what happened?
Were you use him differently and alluded him, or what were some positions other than injuries that he didn't have that impact as he had?
It passed? The injuries were his issue. You know, he missed four weeks to start out, and he came back, he wasn't completely healthy. Then he got hurt again. So a healthy Windfield leads to a healthy place week one. I couldn't answer that personally, but I would venture to say, I'm sure all of everybody played hurt a lot, but when he's healthy, you can see it. I think once he got healthy, he got injured again, so it kind of impacted a little bit.
How are you looking at the secondary capac defense ranks at dough thirtieth or three first in the league in terms of yards allowed, only six interceptions for your secondary are you contemplating a coaching changes.
On that side? Not thinking about that right now. Again, we're having exit interviews, we're fresh off the loss. As the days come, we'll go from there. We won went to the playoffs five times with the defensive coaches we have, so they've a very good coaches. Obviously a lot of things have to happen in that. We gotta get more interceptions. We got to coach it better, but we gotta play it better as well.
You had a lot of injuries and that's part of the game. But also I know on Friday.
Has complee meetings as well.
Are when you re evaluate maybe how you're doing practices or you know, some of the treatment approaches or stretching or anything like that.
Does that go with your off season kind of evaluations?
Off season you re evaluate everything. I mean, there's nothing that goes unturned in the off season. Again, it's too early to say everything that we're gonna evaluate, but we're gonna evaluate everything.
So I'm just curious, off the top of your head, if there's anyone on this team that you think took the biggest stride this year.
I really like where Luke Getticky played. I like the way he came back this year and played, even after he got hurt with the concussion, came back and he played. He made a lot of strides this season as well. So Christian is in before he got hurt, made great strides and did a lot of things. Well, there was a few guys that made strides like that, but those two stand down.
Why does Levante David just spent to you and this franchise.
Uh, personally, We've gotten very close over the years I've been here. He's a he's a coach on the field, he's our captain. He's a leader. Uh, he's a heck of a person. Off the field, he's our bell cow.
Uh.
When things go wrong, he'll fix it. From a mental standpoint. In the locker room, he gets everybody lined up in the right place. He understands the game as well as making a ton of plays himself. He he's meant everything to me as well as our coaching staff and the players in this building at the end of the game, the kind of not at this time. Uh, he was walking pretty good today. Again, he's not running, so I don't know. I haven't gotten to the training room yet. Talk with Liam coulschel er to the Jaguars. Is there anything you say to him, maybe advice you give.
Or anything to say him and maybe trying to get him to run it back?
What's that conversation? Like, I mean, we've had a conversation with me and Land, We're very close. We have these type of conversations. What they expect from an interview and everything else that at least you know you're picking the right guy and we'll see what happens going forward from there. But you know, if they're not talking about your guys for interviews, then you're probably not doing it right. Coach.
You only had seven possessions yesterday on offense. You can see the way the game is going. And even you know, going back to like you know, to get the wold walk off losses Kansas City, do you go for two?
Like?
Do you think about being more aggressive the way a lot of these teams are being, especially in a game where you kind of pick your poison right, it's a slow death or a quick one. But you're down there at fourth and two, you kick the field goal and tie the game. Just take me through the mentality of that, and just not if you believe in your defense and.
You don't get it. They got the ball inside to contend yard line.
That was third and one. Obviously we get the penalty, we go backwards. It was fourth and three, and it's not like when we shot ourselves in the foot a few times on that drive. So it's easier to tie the ball game in that category. If we were moving the ball at ease and get down there every single time, we probably would have went for it. Nah. But at the time we were going forward, we had a third and one, we thought we had two downs to get one yard. We didn't get it. We went backwards and it was twenty seventeen. If we don't get that, we possibly lose the ball game. So we at least we had to tie and try to get the defense to get the ball back.
And how much was their aggressiveness on fourth down at this who had been all year?
But how much did that make it harder for.
You as a defense because you had to stop them.
On four down to nine three? It wasn't harder. We knew they were gonna do it. We were prepared for it. He out athleted us on a few plays, and that's the credit to him.
How you had a young players significant playing time this season? How's that gonna serve you going into the off season?
It helps only if they helped themselves get better, you know, the concentration part and working out in the off season, coming back in shape and being prepared will help us a great deal next year. You can't prepare for injuries.
And you guys did your best foot that key positions other vet impacted before this rivera.
But what do you do moving forward to try to prepare for injury again? Or you try to prepare for it. Me and Jason to sit down and talk about it, how we want to approach the off season, and you know, the practice squad has a big part to do with it, whether it's all rookies, whether it's a mix of rookies and vets. What we're able to get, what we're able to see, and those type of things. So we'll sit down and talk about it and it'll be a long conversation.
Last night, Chris got whoms in a contract here. He's coming out from twenty acl this franchise faith and then he ordered that faith with still the play when he came back to your injury, he's he's entering the same situation. Where as a free agent coming up with an injury. Does that the evidence that you've seen from Chris's.
Rehab and the ability to come back.
Is that help you, guys make the decision towards possibly resigning him to SAU.
See he's an outstanding player if we can sign him back at all, I love to have him back here. Don't know their significance yet of how long he'll be out and how he'll recover, but we definitely like to have him back.
Coacher Shack played four or five stamps last night, and ultimately he's just.
Not ready to play back.
All, he missed the whole season and you come back two weeks aren't gonna get you ready. And the scheme has changed some since he's played, and trying to put him in and do the things he could do interfere with the rest of the calls of the defense. So we're bringing them along slowly and making sure he was in shape. And he didn't want him to go out there and get hurt. But hopefully he has a future for us next year.
Deon Jones, you know we saw more of him on defense this last night. You know, obviously he's a guard of Brasy experience as pencial Pro Bowl before.
Did you like what you saw him out of there last night?
Is it possible he.
Is a future with this team? Small sample size, like what we saw. He's very athletic, He's very good. In the past game right there, he tackled Okay, he did some things well. Like to see more of them. So we'll see where the future holds. But he's a guy. Uh. In hindsight, I would like to have back Tyler.
Know you if you got the draft, you got free agency, what would be the top priority for you?
Would it be edge rusher.
To make this team better if you have to have the top a little early right now for that, Again, we haven't sat down and evaluated everything and going over everything to see what we would have at the top.
Just fresh off a game right there, playoff loss. It's gonna be a couple of weeks before we make that decision.
What about the pusher?
You were getting up in the middle like he was talking about a little desired position.
For those in Colaijah and became a lot of the middles. What can you say about those two guys this year?
They played well all year and Logan's included in that. I thought Logan had a heck of a year as well. I thought the interior three did the heck of a job pushing the pocket all year long. This year. Excuse me the most this year? What they're black. I don't know if it's a surprise, but I think guys played well. I like the steadiness that Graham Barton showed as a rookie and playing one of the toughest spots on the field, going against almost a pro bowler every week, just doing his job and coming to work every day with a lunch pale attitude and making blitz adjustments and stunt adjustments aren't easy for a first year center.
I know injuries are a big part of this, but with the personnel that you had defensively speaking throughout the year and how much you had to shape shift, just how much were you able to deploy the defense that you wanted to do week in week out and maybe you thought you were going to have and during the season, I.
Don't know it changed so much. You know, it's not about deploying the defense, it's about executing what we call. I thought those guys for the most part, did a good job of coming in executing what we called what they can do well, and that was the defense we were going to play, and we had a chance to be successful if they executed the defense. And they did a good job after the bye week and in doing that, and I was proud of him for that.
Strench. We saw a lot more and when he was a guy that you know, at one point in.
The season he was starting.
He came back after we let him go, when he came back from Detroit's practice squad, he had a very professional attitude. He studied, he hardly talked about him making mental arras and everything else, and he became one of our better safeties from the second half of the season on. I'm very proud of the job he did. I told him that earlier this week. Uh, the attitude he came back with, the professionalism, the way he played. He can play free or strong. At the drop of a hat. With guys going down, he was moving from one to the other and he never flinched. And I'm very proud of for that. He was one guy that I could say I could hardly say his name on film that had a mental error.
It doesn't matter the record necessarily, but it's hard to win three division.
Titles in a row period right when you get into postseason pretty soon he would be judged on your postseason success.
So what do you think the next.
Step is to get these guys to know if you're able to get back in this position to win the postseason? Is it luck with injuries? Is it just you know, what would it take for you guys?
It won't be injuries. It's doing the little things right, you know, not turning the ball over, getting off the field on third down. Those those are the little things that happened all year that came up at the end. We had a good stretch defensively of playing third downs, didn't play them well last night. They got the turnover on the plus territory inside the red zone right there. It won't take injuries, because people go to playoffs with injuries all the time. That's not even the factor. So we just got to do the little things right when we get there.
Side of the ball, looking at the seasons for defense, what did you like best about your defense and what did.
You like starting the season. I thought we were fast starting the season. We got banged up pretty early, we got brankeed up pretty early, and we made some routine plays look hard and I didn't like that about it, and that will probably to get at me the whole off season.
I know it's perot value just the morning after a season any lost, but I mean, this is a team that had external expectations that weren't necessarily that high. Any internal expectations probably were higher. You're a team that overachieved and also disappointed.
How do you frame this.
Season for you? Not like you just framed it. We're not gonna overachieve and disappoint. We underachieved. As far as ourselves are concerned, we don't worry about external expectations, our internal expectations for us to go to the Super Bowl. Injury or regardless, our internal expectations are to go to the super Bowl. We did not get that accomplished. We did some good things throughout the year. Yes we had it guys injured. Yes, we got to the playoffs. Yes, but our expectations are to win the Super Bowl. Coorfornia and the last five games and plays.
Is it just from Wall or do you er see us?
Oh, he got banged up and he missed some time. He got banged up. He was playing with the knee, and when he came back, he made the plays he was supposed to make. I mean, he set the edge. He did some good things, and he's one of our best players on defense. He didn't hit a rookie Wall. At the end of the year, they started going away from him some and they started being a non factor because the ball wasn't showing up. But he did everything he was supposed to do.
Saf season made a coaching change at the kind of position. Just what did you see out of.
That group in terms of growth?
I mean this like your youngest position group on your whole roster. Remember one of the groups that had the fewest mental eras during the season as well. Coach Peel did a great job getting paid ready, getting pained ready, getting cope ready, having co available, of using different type of guys to do what they do best.
What you learned about yourself maybe through this year maybe the biggest takeaway as you enter the offseason.
I think the older I get, the more I learned. You know, when you stop learning, you stop growing, and you start understanding things more and you see things quicker, obviously, and you just gotta keep growing. And what you see as a coach isn't what they always see as a player, So you have to constantly think about that with the idea in your head and then the idea of what they could actually do, so that never stops as a coach, and you know, you constantly go through that and with all the different bodies putting in there during the year, that forces you to go outside your box and your normal deal, which is a good thing because it helps you keep coaching fresh. It's not a good thing they get hurt, but it's a good thing that you try to adjust and keep you on your toes. And that's what coaching is all about. It's not about coaching the best players all the time. It's about coaching what you have and making it work and still being a good coach. And we got a lot of guys on the staff that's done that this year. Last night, knowing you lost that fortnight games, do you feels.
Any and all of it?
That's just I think we should have every game at one o'clock.
How much you d like is?
I mean, because I know in the off season you're a human being.
You deserve time to be able to also until you await up for a little bit if you like.
But just how much of that is I guess reviewing what.
You've done and what you've put on tape over the years as a coach, and how much of it is like looking elsewhere and kind of borrowing ideas from certain trends.
That you're seeing around the league, Like where does your inspiration kind.
Of come from?
It's a lot. The first thing you do is review everything you've done, see what they're seeing, see what you see, and see what you can change. Then you're always looking for fresh ideas, whether it's high school, college, pro pee wee ball, You're always looking for fresh ideas, whether it's pressures, whether it's runs, whether it's blocking schemes, whether it's coverages. You're always looking for fresh ideas going forward. Good YEP,