November 3rd, 2026
A victorious Todd Bowles walks off the field Sunday after his defense shut out Atlanta.
Joe hopes readers of this here corner of the interwebs got to hear Joe last night on WDAE-FM 95.7/WDAE-AM 620 last night for the weekly Monday night edition of the JoeBucsFan.com Hour.
There, the discussion turned to KitKat-eating Bucs coach Todd Bowles.
One of the Joe’s said he believed this year has been the best coaching job Todd Bowles has done as head coach. The other Joe was stunned speechless. How could that remotely be possible when the Bucs are 3-5?
Simple. Name the last time Bowles, as a head coach, made major adjustments midseason and they all worked? Take last year, for example: the Bucs imploded down the stretch with a 2-7 record, blowing a division title and missing the playoffs.
What did Bowles do to stop the bleeding? Whatever he tried sure didn’t work.
But this year, it’s working. First, Bowles made wholesale changes to his defensive coaching staff, loaded up on new defensive talent but in the draft and free agency. And look how that worked. The Bucs have one of the better defenses in the league in 2026.
But Joe, what about the offense?
No doubt the passing attack has been wretched beyond words (dead-last in EPA and explosive rate). But the past month, the run game has exploded to carry the Bucs to three wins in the past four games.
That’s no accident, per Jeremy Fowler of ESPN. Fowler noted that a few weeks ago, Bowles had a skull session with Bucs offensive coordinator Zac Robinson.
The two, per Fowler, came to the conclusion the Bucs must lean into their best talent. And that was the blocking of the offensive line and the wheels of Bucky Irving and Kenny Gainwell.
In the last three wins, the Bucs have simply gouged defenses on the ground.
“This [win over Atlanta] was a watershed moment for OC Zac Robinson, who was under some heat,” Fowler said. “The Bucs struggled with their identity for the first five or six weeks of the season.
“I’m told a few weeks ago, Todd Bowles and Zac Robinson huddled up and said, ‘How do we fix this? And how do we lean into the running game?’ The last few weeks, they have been lights out running the ball.
“They feel like that’s their identity with a really good athletic offensive line, Bucky Irvin, Kenny Gainwell [and] ride the hot hand there, and that’s what they’re doing.
“I think if they didn’t adjust and change, there’d be some smoke on Robinson right now. But they have smoothed it out.”
Joe calls that coaching. You adjust on the fly and whatever you change, it immediately makes your team better.
If Bowles took the Dirk Koetter approach in being hands off the other side of the ball, Robinson might very well be canned by now and Bowles would be filling out Social Security forms for his pending (involuntary) retirement come January.
So the Bucs’ passing attack, on the urging of Bowles, went from hideous to non-existant (which is actually an improvement) but the run game has dominated opponents.
No, Joe is not advocating a return for Bowles next season if the Bucs cannot return to the playoffs. Joe is just being real. Bowles has done a helluva job coaching this year.
After the Bucs’ uneven offensive start, HC Todd Bowles and OC Zac Robinson huddled up to plot a new course. The result: A run-first blitz over the last two weeks. pic.twitter.com/TtWxRGoWRW