Expectations dampened.
So as Joe sets up this quote from former Bucs Super Bowl-winning coach Bucco Bruce Arians, Joe has to make the following perfectly clear: Arians was not talking about his successor with the Bucs, Todd Bowles.
But the quote from Arians that Joe is going to use will apply to Joe’s point about Bowles.
Arians had his weekly in-season, in-studio visit on the “Pat McAfee Show” yesterday. The discussion turned to analytics and specifically trying to convert fourth downs.
It’s been the rage in the NFL the past couple of years that teams should go for it on fourth down. So much so that every time you turn on a game broadcast on a Disney/ABC/BSPN platform, you hear three or four times a game, “ESPN Analytics say go for it!”
Zero context offered. Few, if any, consequences for failure explained.
In almost two years of watching football (it’s not uncommon for Joe to watch four football games on a Saturday and he will often watch parts of multiple games in the same time slot, depending how a game is going), Joe has only heard once a broadcaster say, “ESPN Analytics say don’t go for it.”
Joe swears a team could have a fourth-and-40 from their own 10 and ESPN Analytics would say “go for it.”
Arians said that going for it on fourth downs in the NFL “has gotten way out of hand” and that points (a field goal) in big games is “huge.” As Arians said when he was a Bucs coach, if a coach blindly followed analytics without context, “You will get your ass beat.”
There is a reason for that, Arians said. There are way too many moving parts on a football field to go for it (or not go for it) based on a simple calculation alone.
“This game is about heart and feel,” Arians said. “That is what this game is about.”
Again, Arians was not discussing Bowles in any way.
But this is where Joe introduces Bowles into the story. This has nothing to do with analytics, but on Sunday in the immediate aftermath of watching the Bucs lose in Buffalo, it finally sunk in on Joe that Bowles, who is a smart guy, doesn’t appear to always have a feel for a game as it plays out.
For example, every person watching the Bucs-Bills game, the 60-some-thousand in the stadium, the millions watching on CBS across the nation, could see that the Bucs defense was getting shredded and had little to no chance of stopping the Bills in the fourth quarter.
On fourth-and-two from the Bucs-39, despite the Bucs running down the throats of the soft Bills run defense, and the Bills scoring 16 points in their three previous possessions, Bowles elected to punt, thinking his defense could get a stop.
They couldn’t, which came as zero surprise to anyone watching the game except the Bucs’ head coach on the sidelines.
Eight plays later Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen, who was having a record-breaking day (haven’t we witnessed enough of opposing quarterbacks setting personal records against Bowles’ defense?), ran it in from nine yards out to put the game out of reach.
There have been way too many of these instances over the years with Bowles. Joe had thought he had grown out of this habit. He apparently hasn’t.
One game that jumps out to Joe is the overtime loss to Kansas City last year. Without Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Jamel Dean, Bowles had a chance to go for two to take a late lead but instead he chose to tie the game and tangle with one of the greatest comeback quarterbacks in NFL history, Pat Mahomes, leading the then-defending Super Bowl champs on their home turf in overtime.
Just about everyone knew what was coming but Bowles.
There was also the Cleveland game in 2022 when Tom Brady was in the midst of yet another game-winning drive when Bowles pulled the plug on Brady in the final seconds with the ball at midfield. Instead, Bowles wanted to go to overtime.
Everyone watching feared the result. Yup, the Browns won in overtime. Afterwards, Bowles said Brady could have thrown an interception which is why he wanted to go to overtime. This, despite the fact that in the previous 10 games of the season Brady had thrown a grand total of two picks.
And there was the playoff game in Detroit when, trailing by eight at 31-23 with Detroit having a first down at the Bucs-28 with 1:33 left, Bowles did not call a timeout and watched the Lions drain the clock to end the game.
He later said the game was over so why prolong the inevitable by calling timeouts?
There are other examples that, for whatever reason, Joe doesn’t get the sense Bowles has a feel for a game, especially late in close games against good teams.
It’s almost like Bowles chugs a Slurpee in these moments.
The latest example last Sunday of Bowles seemingly not having a feel or a firm grasp of the moment at hand really put a damper on Joe’s hope the Bucs could still end up in Santa Clara representing the NFC in the Super Bowl in February.
Coaches cannot be tossing away potential wins against good teams in close games and hope to advance very far. Sooner or later, it’s a good bet that in the playoffs, a team is going to face a strong opponent with a stud quarterback and the game might just be close.
A game has ebbs and flows, ups and downs, a heartbeat all its own. Each quarter is different. Each possession, there are changes. If one doesn’t have a feel or an understanding for how a game is unfolding, then you’re just flying blind.