Todd Bowles Identifies Where Bucs Need Improvement In 2024

Todd Bowles and the Bucs saw their 2023 season come to an end with a 31-23 loss to the Lions in the NFC Divisional Round on Sunday. It was a bitter finish to the season considering the game was tied at 17 heading into the fourth quarter, but the reality is that Tampa Bay outperformed outside expectations to a significant degree this season.

Inside the walls of the AdventHealth Training Center, there was always belief. But nationally and even among many within the fan base, the Bucs weren’t supposed to do anything significant this year.

Some of that had to do with the retirement of Tom Brady, some was a result of the dead cap money the team absorbed in 2023 and some came from a lack of faith in Bowles as a head coach.

Bucs HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today

“As a coach, and as players and competitors, you don’t even look at the money. When you put a product out there and when you go to work every day, you’re supposed to win – that’s how I’m built, anyway,” Bowles said Monday. “That’s how we’re built as a team, regardless of how much money you’re making. You’re supposed to do the best job you can coaching and they’re supposed to do the best job they can playing.

“We figured if we did that, we’d give ourselves a chance and we gave ourselves a chance. Without even looking at all of that, I understand, in hindsight, that may play a role in everything but that’s not how we looked at the season. We played that way. We played that way and prepared that way and that’s why we probably got as far as we [did]. I don’t really look at that. That kind of takes care of itself. We understood going in what it would be, but that wasn’t an excuse for us to be bad.”

The Bucs Did Prove A Lot Of Doubters Wrong In 2023

Bucs RB Rachaad White – Photo by: USA Today

Whatever the reasons, the 2023 Bucs weren’t supposed to amount to much. Yet on the second weekend of the playoffs, there they were.

Going off of outside expectations, Todd Bowles and Co. weren’t favorites to three-peat as NFC South champions. They weren’t supposed to finish with a winning record and they certainly weren’t supposed to make the playoffs, much less win a playoff game and stand as one of the final eight teams still playing.

Instead, Tampa Bay was, in terms of opening odds, picked to finish last in the division. Its win total was set at 6.5. According to some, this was a team that was supposed to be picking inside the top 10 of the 2024 Draft — and maybe even the top five.

So for the Bucs to win five of six down the stretch to finish 9-8 and win their third straight NFC South title before winning a playoff game over the Eagles? That was a huge team for a young team and a squad that was, in a lot of ways, in a transitional year.

Bucs CB Carlton Davis III and Texans TE Dalton Shultz – Photo by: USA Today

Saying all of that, of course it wasn’t all roses for Tampa Bay. Todd Bowles’ team collapsed in the middle of the season after a 3-1 start. A 1-6 stretch between the middle of October and the end of November made the late-season run necessary just to sneak into the playoffs.

Not to mention, the Bucs offense had a subpar rushing attack and inconsistent production from pass catchers not named Mike Evans and Chris Godwin while the defense was abysmal on third downs and ranked as one of the league’s worst units against the pass.

There was also the fact that special teams-wise, Jake Camarda was up and down at points in the year. And the coaching on both sides of the ball left something to be desired at plenty of points, too.

On the whole, this was a young team that got hot at the right time and overperformed expectations in a lot of ways. There’s plenty to work with here and the postseason experience will have helped, but there will be areas where Tampa Bay will have to get much better before the 2024 season kicks off.

Where Does Todd Bowles Think His Team Can Improve In 2024?

One day after the Bucs were dumped out of the second round of the playoffs, head coach Todd Bowles held his end-of-season press conference. And when asked where he’d like to see his team improve in 2024, he had plenty to say.

“We’ve got to get better at everything,” Bowles said. “Coaching-wise, you want to get better at situational football all the way around. Defensively, I know for sure third downs we’ve got to get better at. We used to be good in two-minute [situations] – we gave up some two-minute plays. We could look back and point at a myriad of things. We’d like to get the running game even better than it was – it got better, but we could get it better. We’d like to have a better return game on special teams.

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles and offensive coordinator Dave Canales – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“There’s a lot of things we can get better at from a coaching standpoint. There are a lot of things to get better at from a teaching standpoint and from a playing standpoint. That’s just coaching. That’s constant football for us.”

Bowles was also asked whether he would like more interceptions from his defense in 2024 and he admitted that, while they were still good at getting takeaways this year, the Bucs could definitely use some better hands in the secondary.

“Given the volume, yes, but we were still Top [12] in takeaways,” he said. “Given the volume, you’d love to have them. We could catch better, I can tell you that much. You always like to get turnovers – you can never have enough. You can never have enough turnovers. Again, that’s another area we can get better at.”

What should help the Bucs this offseason is having some stability. Two offseasons ago, it Tom Brady retiring and unretiring, plus it was Todd Bowles taking the reins over from Bruce Arians in late March. There were then plenty of distractions surrounding Brady in training camp and into the season.

Last offseason, there was the real retirement of Brady, which led to a big shift for the franchise as a whole. There was also some personnel turnover that signaled the end of an era, as well as a new offensive coordinator.

So assuming the Bucs can keep Dave Canales and re-sign top free agents like quarterback Baker Mayfield, Pro Bowl wide receiver Mike Evans, legendary linebacker Lavonte David and All-Pro safety Antoine Winfield Jr., they should largely be the same team heading into the 2024 season. And with a few roster tweaks and some improvements in the areas that Todd Bowles mentioned Monday, it could set up another year of ruling the division and earning some playoff football in Tampa Bay.

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