2-Point Conversion: Todd Bowles Is Firmly On The Hot Seat

It’s time for Scott Reynolds’ post-game 2-Point Conversion column, which features two big statements, two probing questions and two bold predictions.

The Bucs have lost four in a row after losing a stunner at Houston, 39-37, to the Texans. Tampa Bay blew a 10-point lead and finally retook the lead, 37-33, with less than a minute to play. But Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud drove his team 75 yards for the win, throwing his fifth touchdown pass – the game-winner – with less than 10 seconds remaining for Houston’s fourth win of the year.

The 3-5 Bucs return home to play the 3-5 Tennessee Titans next Sunday at Raymond James Stadium.

2 BIG STATEMENTS

STATEMENT 1: Todd Bowles Is Firmly On The Hot Seat

Following the 24-18 loss at Buffalo on Thursday Night Football, Bucs head coach Todd Bowles said that the team’s three-game losing streak “won’t snowball.”

Bowles was wrong – dead wrong.

Wrong like many of his defensive play-calls were in Sunday’s shocking, 39-37 loss at Houston.

As I wrote in Friday’s SR’s Fab 5, Bowles and his defense were going to be facing a slew of rookie QBs and unheralded backups in the final 10 weeks of the season. After losing to the likes of rookies and backups last year in Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky in Pittsburgh, P.J. Walker in Carolina, Jacobt Brissett in Cleveland and Desmond Ridder in Atlanta last year, Bowles simply couldn’t allow that type of quarterback to beat Tampa Bay this season.

Yet it happened – and we need to stop calling Bowles a defensive mastermind.

C.J. Stroud didn’t look like a rookie while throwing for 470 yards and five touchdowns, including the game-winner with less than 10 seconds left. Instead, Bowles and his defense made Stroud, who set an NFL record for passing yards by a rookie, look like a future Hall of Famer.

“Defensively, the fundamentals and technique, breakdowns at the end of the ball game, the start of the third quarter are unacceptable,” Bowles said after the game.

Tampa Bay is now 3-5 and mired in a four-game losing streak – and Bowles is firmly on the hot seat as a result.

We’re well past the snowball stage, folks.

Prepare for an avalanche – one that will ultimately lead to Bowles’ demise as Tampa Bay’s head coach.

In addition to losing to a rookie quarterback in Stroud and a rookie receiver in Tank Dell, Bowles lost to a rookie head coach in DeMeco Ryans and a rookie offensive coordinator in Bobby Slowick.

Embarrassing.

With a home game against another promising rookie quarterback in Tennessee’s Will Levis next week at Raymond James Stadium – where Tampa Bay is just 1-3 this year – followed by what’s sure to be a loss at San Francisco it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see this team at 3-7 in a few weeks.

Sunday’s loss at Houston reminded me of Tampa Bay’s 31-30 loss at Washington in 2015 when the Bucs blew a 24-7 halftime lead. Kirk Cousins led the Redskins back, outscoring the Bucs, 24-6, in the second half and finishing the game with a memorable “You like that?!” statement while walking into the locker room.

I labeled that loss the “Collapse At The Capitol,” and called for Lovie Smith to be fired afterwards. The Bucs went 4-6 down the stretch to finish 6-10 and Smith was indeed fired at the end of the 2015 season.

Bowles will be fired, too – likely after the season.

The Glazers didn’t fire Smith or Greg Schiano midseason, even after Schiano started the 2013 season 0-8. They also didn’t fire Raheem Morris during the 2011 season while Tampa Bay was in the midst of losing 10 straight games to finish out the year.

The Glazers reserve the right to change their mind, but I would be surprised if Bowles doesn’t get the chance to finish the season out, especially with the NFC South still up for grabs. New Orleans is 5-4 and is currently atop the division.

Yet I don’t see how his Tampa Bay team rebounds from this loss, which Bowles aptly called “devastating” after the game. It was Bowles’ side of the ball that let this team down on Sunday – big time. Not only did Stroud throw for almost 500 yards, but the Texans had three 100-yard receivers – and none of them were Nico Collins, Houston’s leading receiver. He was held to just three catches for 54 yards and the game’s first touchdown.

Backup receiver Noah Brown had six catches for 153 yards, including a 75-yard touchdown. Tight end Dalton Schultz had 10 catches for 130 yards and a score. Dell had six catches for 114 yards and two TDs.

This on a day when Tampa Bay’s struggling offense scored 37 – THIRTY-SEVEN – points. That’s nearly as many points as the team has scored in the last three games combined (40).

Safety Ryan Neal, who should have been benched weeks ago, took a bad angle and gave up Brown’s 75-yard touchdown, which changed momentum in the third quarter. That came as a surprise to no one, as Neal has taken poor angles and given up touchdowns throughout the year.

Cornerback Carlton Davis III, who looks awfully unhappy playing a ton of zone defense that Bowles continues to call, was absolutely torched for three second-half touchdowns on Sunday. He gave up one to Schultz sandwiched in between two TDs to Dell, including the game-winner.

Davis, who has just one interception in the last year and a half, did a quite a bit of talking before the season started and has not backed it up. Not like a cornerback that makes an average of $14.8 million per year should.

On the Texans’ final drive Bowles continued to play the kind of soft zone coverage that allowed Houston to score its first 33 points of the game. Tampa Bay’s defense sacked Stroud three times, but did not pressure him or harass him at all on Houston’s game-winning drive. That’s inexcusable and the blame falls squarely on Bowles.

After the game, Bowles, the head coach, said he is not going to fire Bowles, the defensive play-caller.

But it sure seems like Bowles’ firing will become inevitable as Tampa Bay’s losses continue to mount.

STATEMENT 2: Rachaad White And Cade Otton Step Up Versus Texans

The two primary weapons on Tampa Bay’s offense are undoubtedly Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. Both receivers combined to catch six passes for 103 yards and no touchdowns in Sunday’s loss. Evans was more productive, catching four passes for 87 yards and having a clutch recovery of Trey Palmer’s fumble in the fourth quarter. Godwin was targeted six times but only caught two passes for 16 yards.

Thankfully the Bucs got some long-awaited performances from a couple of secondary offensive weapons. Tight end Cade Otton scored the Bucs’ first and final touchdowns of the day, capping off a career-high six-catch, 70-yard day. Otton came into Sunday with just 22 catches for 174 yards and no touchdowns.

Running back Rachaad White, who is coming off 109 yards of total offense from the Buffalo game, had 73 yards rushing and four catches for 46 yards at Houston to total 119 yards. More importantly, White had the first two-touchdown game of his career.

Was this an aberration for Otton and White? Or can they continue to play at or near this level from a production standpoint for the Bucs down the stretch, giving Tampa Bay’s offense more than just Evans and Godwin to count on? We’ll see in the weeks ahead.

2 PROBING QUESTIONS

QUESTION 1: How Did This Collapse On Defense Happen?

Bucs head coach and defensive play-caller Todd Bowles has become predictable with too much soft zone coverage this season, and the Texans were ready for it. Combine that was not enough pressure – either from four-man fronts or blitzes – and poor maintenance of pass rush lanes, and a 39-37 loss was the end result.

Bowles has decided to play more zone defense this year to mask the man coverage weaknesses of strong safety Ryan Neal and linebacker Devin White – instead of playing to the strengths of his outside cornerbacks Jamel Dean and Carlton Davis III, which is man coverage.

His refusal to bench Neal for Dee Delaney continued to haunt the Bucs as Neal’s bad angle allowed Noah Brown to score on a 75-yard touchdown. Neal was finally benched for Delaney in the second half, but Neal should have been replaced by Delaney in the lineup weeks ago.

White played one of his better games of the season against the Texans, and finally got his first sack of the year to go along with nine tackles. But for most of the year White’s play has been sub-par, and Bowles has failed to hold him accountable. White is Bowles’ blind spot and continues to make excuses for him and provides cover for him at the podium. As a result White hasn’t improved as a player.

After the loss, Bowles continued his mantra of saying there were coverage busts on Houston’s game-winning drive. That’s been an unfortunate weekly occurrence in the Bucs’ four-game losing streak. Way too many busts for a secondary that has veterans like Davis, Dean and Antoine Winfield Jr., who have played together now in Bowles’ system for the past four years.

With Bowles being a former NFL safety and installing coverages in his defense before working on the accompanying pressure packages, these coverage busts are ultimately his fault and unacceptable. He has to teach it better and call the defense better. No excuses.

“If we did what we were supposed to do we would have been fine playing zone,” Bowles said after the game.

Remember, this was the same C.J. Stroud that completed 16-of-24 passes for just 140 yards and no touchdowns, and was sacked twice in last week’s 15-13 loss at Carolina.

QUESTION 2: What Was The Quirkiest Stat Of The Game?

Both the Bucs and Texans struggled on third downs.

The Bucs scored a season-high 37 points and racked up a respectable 332 yards of offense, mostly behind Baker Mayfield’s 265 passing yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. Yet Tampa Bay was only 3-of-13 (23.1%) on third down, which was a bit of a surprise given how successful Tampa Bay was in lighting up the scoreboard. The Bucs did go for it on two fourth downs and were successful, but third down was a problem on Sunday.

Tampa Bay entered the game worst in the league on third down defense, allowing an average of 50% conversions. Yet the Bucs held the Texans to just 3-of-11 (27.3%) on third downs. That didn’t seem to slow down Houston’s offense, which still racked up 26 first downs, 496 total yards and scored 39 points.

2 BOLD PREDICTIONS

PREDICTION 1: Todd Bowles Won’t Get Fired In-Season

Bucs fans want blood after the team’s fourth straight loss, this one in embarrassing fashion at the hands of a rookie quarterback, who made Todd Bowles’ defense look silly in a stunning, 39-37 loss. But after watching the Glazers stand by and oversee Raheem Morris’ downward spiral of 10 straight losses to end the 2011 season I don’t think they’ll fire Bowles until the end of the year.

If the Bucs get in a similar downward spiral and the team winds up with double-digit losses it will only increase Tampa Bay’s positioning in the 2024 NFL Draft. Right now if the draft were held today the 3-5 Bucs would have the eighth overall pick. So perhaps the Glazers are keen to that fact and may be looking to the 2024 season and drafting a franchise quarterback – hopefully one as talented as C.J. Stroud.

PREDICTION 2: These Bucs Won’t Make The Playoffs

Tampa Bay had to go 6-4 down the stretch to get to 9-8, which would probably be good enough to make the playoffs this year in a weak NFC. Now that margin for error shrinks as the Bucs have to go 6-3 over the final nine weeks to reach 9-8.

Tampa Bay has already lost a pair of winnable games to Atlanta and Houston. Two surefire losses await versus two better teams in San Francisco and Jacksonville. So that means the Bucs essentially have to win six out of the seven winnable games that remain against the Titans, Colts, Falcons, Saints and Panthers (twice).

That’s a tall order and another losing season seems likely after Sunday’s loss at Houston.