Todd Bowles Reveals Where Bucs Defense Must Improve
Every coach in the NFL is going to tell you that there’s room for improvement with the team that they are in charge of. Not every area is as identifiable as it was for Todd Bowles and the Bucs looking back on the 2022 season and heading into 2023.
The defense was the unit that got Tampa Bay its second consecutive NFC South title. And the defense was able to keep the Bucs afloat in games while the offense struggled. The fact that the Bucs were 7-3 record in games where the defense allowed 21 points or less speaks to how important they were to keeping Tampa Bay competitive. That includes going 4-0 in those games over the final nine weeks of the regular season.
Todd Bowles Knows Exactly Where Defense Needs Improvement
With that said, there were glaring holes of underachievement that hadn’t been seen before since Todd Bowles began calling defensive plays four seasons ago. He discussed those areas in detail out while speaking at the NFL Annual Meetings this week.
“As a defensive coach, you always want them to do more,” Bowles said. “And they play well at times, I’m not taking anything away from them, they play well at times, but I thought we should’ve had more turnovers, we got to be better in the run game this year. There’s always things to get better at.
“I’m not bashing them because I think they play hard and I think we do a lot of good things, I just think we have to clean up some things mentally and be on the same page to be better.”
The two areas Bowles identified were turnovers and stopping the run. Those are not only spot on, but were very surprising lapses last year given such high expectations. Tampa Bay mustered 20 turnovers last season, including just 10 interceptions and 10 fumble recoveries. In 2021, the Bucs recorded 30 turnovers from 17 interceptions and 13 fumble recoveries.
It wasn’t necessarily the huge drop off in the numbers of interceptions as it was the dropping of the football on interception opportunities, and the inconsistent ability to knock the ball out of the hands of the opponents. Bucs fans should be overjoyed that they have the dynamic duo of Carlton Davis III and Jamel Dean together once more at cornerback. But one place those two struggle is creating takeaways. Only three players on the roster had at least two or more interceptions last season. They had double that amount the year prior.
Yet what came as the most stunning fall off was the trouble Tampa Bay had in stopping the run game. This was the calling card of a Bowles-led defense for years. Teams would previously refuse to run the ball against the Bucs, electing to throw short passes instead because it was typically a futile cause.
For example, teams averaged 92.5 rushing yards per game against Tampa Bay in 2021. Those numbers jumped all the way up to 120.7 yards per game last year. Maybe it was injuries along the defensive line, players getting older or the young guys not being ready just yet. But the Bucs’ struggles in stopping the run were surprising.
Lavonte David Echoes Todd Bowles’ Sentiments
Interestingly enough, one week before Todd Bowles commented on the defense, legendary linebacker Lavonte David talked about where he thought the unit could improve heading into the 2023 season. It comes as no surprise that both men had similar answers, and David even identified another problem that needs to be addressed.
“Taking the ball away and third downs,” David said. “[Those are] the main things. If you look back on the season and kind of reflect, you get a lot of down time and you look back and watch some film like I’ve been doing. You see the things that hurt us and I would just say we haven’t taken the ball away as much as we did in previous years and we didn’t get off the field on third downs as much as we used to.
“That’s something that we have to get back to but at the end of the day that’s something we have to work on as a group. That’s a thing that we have to put more effort into as far as [not having] blown coverages and everybody using the proper technique and understanding the situations.”
As Tampa Bay begins its offseason program next month, Bowles and Co. know exactly where their focus will be heading into the 2023 season.
