Ex-Buc weighs in.
A guy who spent early morning after early morning picking Todd Bowles’ brain a few years ago has firm thoughts on the 2026 Buccaneers.
And they are in line with most Tampa Bay fans.
That’s right. A cool 70 percent of fans participating in Joe’s recent flash poll believe the Bucs will finish this season with a winning record. And most of those are calling for 10, 11 or 12 wins.
Yes, it’s easy to find Bucs fans with a losing mentality, but it’s much easier to find optimism.
Former Bucs defensive back (2022) Logan Ryan is now an NFL analyst for CBS. The two-time Super Bowl champ was a very cerebral player and was an eager student of the Bowles defense. Ryan sat with Bowles for long film sessions and admitted to being worn out by Bowles’ choice of music. Joe suspects the Four Tops at 6:15 a.m. might fatigue a young man.
Last week, Ryan went through a long exercise for CBS HQ breaking down the Bucs schedule.
Ryan went game-by-game and landed on a 10-6 record. However, the road he laid out was rocky, and Joe wonders how the Bucs would handle the rough start Ryan puts them on.
Ryan sees an opening day loss at Cincinnati, followed by home wins against Cleveland and Minnesota. But then Ryan has the Bucs losing at home to Green Bay and falling four days later at Dallas on Thursday Night Football. That’s a 2-3 start with 10 days off until a home game against the Steelers. If that nightmare scenario happens, Joe could smell Bucs fans turning on Todd Bowles with a resounding fury leading up to that Steelers game.
It’ll take a mentally tough Bucs team to overcome that, especially at The Licht House before at least 25,000 rabid Steelers fans.
Ryan likes the Bucs’ offseason upgrades, but he also is skeptical of losing the in-game leadership of Mike Evans and Lavonte David. There are countless times when the Bucs relied on Evans for a big catch or David to make a big play to seal a game (see interception at Seattle last year), Ryan said. That must be replaced.
Ryan, who lives in Tampa full-tme and pays close attention to the Bucs, made a great point about Bucs fans being “tired” of their tea being a weak-division champ. He said Bucs fans want and expect at least a division title and a playoff win.