Put away your pitchforks, the time has come to praise Todd Bowles

TAMPA — This would not have happened under Jon Gruden.

No offense to Chucky, but this was not his kind of team. Gruden was a sucker for veterans. The older, the better. He brought in Charlie Garner to play running back at 32. (It was his last season in the NFL.) He brought in Tim Brown to be a receiver at 38. (Also, his last season.) He brought Chidi Ahanotu back at 34. (Yes, it was the final stop for him, too.) There was Jeff Garcia and Joey Galloway and Kevin Carter and … you get the picture.

This probably would not have happened under Bruce Arians, either.

Patience was not his thing. Neither was running the ball. His last five seasons as a head coach, his offenses finished 3, 5, 4, 6 and 1 in pass attempts. He wanted to score quickly, often and during halftime, too, if he could pull it off.

No, it was going to take a different kind of head coach if Tampa Bay were to reach the playoffs. A coach willing to guide a young, cap-ravaged roster through its growing pains without screaming. A coach capable of holding a locker room together after six losses in seven games. A coach whose ego did not demand any aesthetic beyond a winning result on the scoreboard.

Turns out, Todd Bowles was the perfect coach for the 2023 Bucs.

That’s not a popular opinion in Tampa Bay, and I appreciate that. Bowles does not have Gruden’s maniacal intensity on the sideline. He does not have Arians’ sharp tongue, or Tony Dungy’s paternal aura. On game day and in press conferences, he displays all the personality of an automated bot, and that drives fans crazy when wins are not coming easily.

But it’s also kind of the point.

There is no one-size-fits-all formula in the NFL. Different coaches are successful at different times because of unique circumstances. You know Hall of Famer Hank Stram was a bust in New Orleans, and Mike Ditka had three consecutive losing seasons to finish his career with the Saints, too.

By the same token, Gruden was absolutely the right man for the job in Tampa Bay in 2002 because the offense needed a kick in the butt. Arians was an inspired choice almost 20 years later because he changed the locker room culture and gave a veteran team a needed swagger.

And, in a roundabout way, that’s why this Bucs team needed Bowles.

He’s not a hot, young coaching commodity, and he doesn’t have a fancy defensive plan with a cool nickname. He’s not yukking it up with the pregame crew on Fox, and he may not be the right coach in the years to come. But for this season, for this team, there was tremendous value in a coach who understood the roster and recognized what it would take to win in the NFC South this year.

The Bucs were in the top half of the league in protecting the ball. In penalties, too. They weren’t very successful running the ball, but they stayed committed to a ground game because they knew they could not beat many teams in wide-open, high-scoring games. That’s just smart football.

Think about Tampa Bay’s opponent in the first round of the playoffs. The Eagles needed to replace a departed defensive coordinator and hired the relatively inexperienced Sean Desai from Seattle. Just as Bowles hired the inexperienced Dave Canales from Seattle to be his offensive coordinator.

The difference is Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni hedged his bet by hiring Matt Patricia to look over Desai’s shoulder as a defensive consultant. And when things started going poorly in December, Sirianni demoted Desai and put Patricia in charge. The Eagles have given up 29 points a game since then.

Bowles, on the other hand, allowed Canales to grow into his job. He did not panic or criticize when the Bucs struggled to score at midseason. Tampa Bay ended up increasing its per-game scoring average more than 10% from last season, and Canales is interviewing for a head-coaching position in Carolina.

The Bucs were playing the hardest schedule in the NFC South, they were using a quarterback who made less money than 35 other QBs this season, they had one of the youngest rosters in the NFL and they had nearly $80 million in dead money against the salary cap.

Seriously, how many more games do you think they should have won?

Tampa Bay is the first team since the 2014 Cowboys to reach the playoffs while leading the league in dead money. That’s an incredible compliment to the roster put together by general manager Jason Licht, and the patience and wisdom of Bowles.

I don’t know if Bowles will be a success in 2024. His record as a head coach is spotty, and he may be at his best with a group of overachievers. But there is one thing I’m pretty sure about this morning:

Tampa Bay is fortunate Todd Bowles was here in 2023.

John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.

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