November 5th, 2026
Trusting players.
Can the Bucs run to the playoffs?
We’re not preparing for Week 9 of the NFL season. And the Bucs passing game still sinks. In fact, it may have sunk if the Bucs if not for the intervention of KitKat-eating Bucs coach Todd Bowles.
Earlier this week, NFL insider Jeremy Fowler of ESPN claimed Bowles had a sitdown with Bucs offensive coordinator Zac Robinson. There, the two figured out a way forward.
The two decided that the offense’s strength was its offensive line and two pretty good running backs. So why not play ground-and-pound, to an extreme level, to get the Bucs back on a winning track and perhaps ride that run game to the playoffs?
So far it has worked. The Bucs have won three of their past four games (the one loss came in overtime when the Bucs choked away a lead at The Licht House).
Yesterday, Bowles was asked what took place to change the Bucs’ run game from mediocre to perhaps the most dominant in the league currently.
Bowles, as he is wont to do, just shrugged and suggested the offense only needed tinkering.
“I think we’ve tweaked some things, obviously, in how we’re running it and the things that certain guys can do well up front, as well as what kind of runs the [running] backs can do,” Bowles said, which seems to Joe like more than just tweaking. “I think the coaches get more comfortable with the players and vice versa, and everybody is settling into the scheme and kind of buying in and being on the same page, really. We finally got on the same page and they’re making it work.”
The coaches just got comfortable with the players? What?
The Bucs have been practicing off and on since April. And it took until early October for coaches to get comfortable with the players? Sorry, Joe isn’t buying that.
But what in the world, if this is true, were assistants doing until October, until assistants started trusting the players? Nah, man.
Joe would be more apt to buy the following than this fish tale: Robinson wanted to run the offense a certain way and it was just not working. It was so bad that Robinson was on the verge of getting run (this is all speculation on Joe’s part).
Bowles, knowing if something didn’t change quickly he was going to find himself collecting Social Security in January if he didn’t step in, had his sitdown with Robinson and basically told Robinson to mimic what his good friend Liam Coen did two years ago and — voila! — the rushing offense quickly came together and began to dominate, just like they did two years ago.
And now, the Bucs only find themselves a half-game out of first place in the NFC South landfill. And all of a sudden, Bowles hot seat has cooled quicker than you can say “Josh Grizzard.”