Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ linebacker Lavonte David said it best on a recent "Caps Off" podcast episode:
"We sh*t the bed."
This, of course, is referring to Tampa losing seven of its last nine games, which might be one of the worst collapses in league history.
Tampa only would have had to go 3-6 to win the NFC South.
Worse, the Bucs went more than a month without playing a winning team and lost all four of those games.
Upsets in the NFL are normal.
Four upsets in succession? Not so much.
For the Bucs to be better in 2026, they must fix what went wrong in 2025, and here are three things that led to the collapse.
LEADERSHIP
If you ask a Bucs fan about why the team choked, it probably won’t take long for them to say “Todd Bowles,” “Baker Mayfield” or both.
The head coach enters 2026 on the hot seat, and aside from the team’s record, there’s fair reason to question Tampa’s leadership.
A good example of this took place after Tampa’s loss to the Atlanta Falcons Dec. 11.
He went on a viral rant in his postgame presser, and at no point during that rant did he blame himself.
The great Bear Bryant once said: “If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, you did it.”
When things went bad that night, Bowles blamed everybody else.
Additionally, people have wondered why the Bucs are the only team in the NFL without a defensive coordinator.
Several teams have head coaches that call either the offensive or defensive plays.
Bowles is the only head coach who is also his team’s DC.
This would be all well and good if the Bucs had a good defense, but they didn’t in 2025, finishing 20th in the league in scoring.
It’s been reported by ESPN that some feel that the complexity of Bowles scheme paired with his preference for walkthroughs, rather than live practicing, have contributed to Tampa’s struggles.
A good quarterback can solve a lot of problems regardless of who the coach is, and through nine games, Mayfield was on of the best (16 touchdowns, two interceptions).
But through the last seven games, Mayfield looked more like an erratic rookie than an eight-year vet, throwing nine interceptions, with several coming in big spots.
The biggest pick of the Bucs’ season arguably came in that December Falcons game, when Mayfield threw a fourth-quarter pick to Dee Ford that opened the door for Atlanta to come back.
Whether it was on the field or on the sidelines, Tampa’s leadership needed to be better.
Finding ‘Killer Instinct’
When it came time for the Bucs to finish, they just couldn’t do it.
A good sign of a “killer instinct” is when a team can put together a drive and end it with touchdown.
Not a lot of teams were worse at doing that than Tampa Bay, which finished 24th out of 32 teams in red-zone offense.
Defensively, a good sign of a killer instinct is when a team can allow its share of yards on a drive, but bear down in red zone.
No team in the league was worse at that than Tampa Bay, which finished last in red-zone defense.
The Falcons went 5-for-5 in the red zone against the Bucs with four touchdowns, and that made all the difference in a 29-28 loss for Tampa that, had it gone differently, would have gotten the Bucs in the playoffs.
The Offensive Coordinator
It would be unfair to blame Mayfield without pointing the finger at the offensive coordinator who was fired after just one season.
Whether people love or hate Bowles, one thing that can’t be denied is that he knows how to pick offensive coordinators.
Dave Canales filled that role in 2023 and was Carolina’s head coach by 2024.
Liam Coen succeed Canales, and the Bucs thought highly enough of him to offer him the richest coordinator contract in NFL history. Coen ultimately declined, became the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars and went 13-5 in his first season.
To succeed Coen, Bowles promoted passing game coordinator Josh Grizzard, a 35-year-old who the Bucs hoped would be cut from the same cloth as his two predecessors.
Instead, the Bucs fired Grizzard after just one season, and hired his successor, Zac Robinson, knowing Mayfield would approve.
Rachaad White, a free-agent running back who likely won’t be back with the Bucs, summed up Grizzard this way.
"As an OC, you're trying to get everybody the ball in the right manner or the right way and do this or do that. I don't think it went as planned," he said.
Nothing about the final stretch of 2025 went as planned for the Bucs, and if things don’t go as planned in 2026, there’s a good chance the organization will need to do a complete reset.
ㅤ
Join our ROUNDTABLE community! It's completely free to join. Share your thoughts, engage with our Roundtable writers, and chat with fellow members.
Download the free Roundtable APP, and stay even more connected!