Bucs’ Bowles Weighs Options Of Playing Starters In Week 18

The fact that the Bucs won the NFC South division with one more week left in the 2022 regular season puts them in a precarious situation heading into the last game of the regular season. Tampa Bay is in the playoffs as the No. 4 seed and can’t move up or down based on the outcome of Sunday’s game at Atlanta.

Without really having much to play for, will some top starters on the Bucs get a game off to keep them healthy for the postseason? Head coach Todd Bowles is weighing all of his options.

Bucs HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“Right now I’m planning on playing them,” Bowles said on Monday. “We’ll see as the week goes forward, but we can get better at a lot of things that we need to work on, and we don’t need to take our foot off the gas.”

Tampa Bay is coming off one of their best offensive performances of the season where they scored 30 points. The Bucs haven’t been scoring in a high volume this season, so the importance of continuing to build on that performance is probably a little higher than it usually would be.

On the flip side – if something were to happen to one of their best players, such as an injury to quarterback Tom Brady, that would derail the Bucs’ playoff chances before they even reached the game. It’s a fine line to balance, but Bowles said that if you go in worrying about getting hurt, then you’ll get hurt.

“I mean, it’s football. You can’t play 16 games and then worry about the 17th,” Bowles said. “You can’t play three preseason games and 16 games and practice every day and say you may get hurt in the 17th game. You can get hurt the first week, you can get hurt in training camp. If you worry about that, you’re probably going to get hurt anyway.

“We signed up to play football and coach football, that’s what we’re going to do. Everybody that loves football, that loves to play, will play the game. Injuries are going to happen. That doesn’t mean it happens in Week 17, the playoff game or preseason. You’ve just got to coach it and you’ve got to play it. If you worry about injuries, you probably don’t need to be playing this sport.”

Bucs’ Most Important Players Are Dealing With Injuries

Last week’s matchup with the Panthers was essentially a playoff game. If the Bucs won, they clinched the division. If the Panthers got the win, they’d be up a game with one to go. Because of that, Tampa Bay saw players who had been out return to the lineup. Defensive tackle Vita Vea (calf) and cornerback Jamel Dean (toe) returned to action as two examples.

But with the division title secured, would players dealing with more serious injuries push it for a game like this?

Offensive tackle is another topic of discussion. Right tackle Tristan Wirfs is dealing with a high ankle sprain, while left tackle Donovan Smith just came back from a foot injury. It sounds like it would be best if they rested, but with a 53-man roster Bowles and the coaches can only sit so many guys, especially at a position that is thin on the depth chart.

Bucs RT Tristan Wirfs, C Robert Hainsey, LT Donovan Smith and QB Tom Brady – Photo by: USA Today

“Well, we don’t have many to begin with,” Bowles said. “It’s not like training camp when you have 80 guys, 90 guys. We’re limited to begin with, but some guys need some work on things. As the week goes forward, we’ll progress and make those decisions, but right now everybody needs to plan on playing.”

Quarterback Tom Brady has already come out and said he wants to play. The scenario was also floated to Bowles of the starters beginning the game and then getting pulled halfway through. He’s open to entertaining the idea, but it sounds like the overall decision may change throughout the week.

“It’s possible,” Bowles said. “Like I said, it’s early in the week. We haven’t made any decisions yet. We haven’t met on it, we haven’t talked about it, everything is on the table. We’ll talk about it and we’ll move forward from there.”