Todd Bowles is running out of room in Tampa.
The Buccaneers’ ugly home loss to the Browns on Sunday didn’t just drop them to 0-2 - it poured gasoline on the growing fire around the head coach. After a Week 1 loss to the Bengals, Tampa got a chance to steady itself against one of the NFL’s weakest teams. Instead, the Bucs found a new low in the Bowles era.
This was the kind of game that was supposed to calm everyone down. Emeka Egbuka said earlier in the week the Bucs were hoping to “ put on a show” for the home fans.
What they delivered looked nothing like that. Tampa blew a 16-6 third-quarter lead, watched Baker Mayfield get booed by the home crowd, and saw Deshaun Watson - the quarterback he replaced in Cleveland four years ago - outplay him in the same building.
Even the finish was messy. Fans sat through a two-hour weather delay at the two-minute warning while Tampa was driving for a potential winning touchdown, then came back to see the Bucs fail to punch it in.
That kind of loss is hard to defend. Under Bowles, it’s becoming a pattern.
The frustrating part for Tampa is that the roster doesn’t look short on talent. Mayfield is supposed to be a franchise quarterback, even if he hasn’t looked like one so far this season.
Bucky Irving brings big-play juice at running back. The receiver group is deep.
The offensive line was expected to be one of the league’s best.
Bowles’ side of the ball was supposed to be even more reliable after an aggressive offseason. Tampa added several notable defensive free agents and used three of its first four draft picks on Rueben Bain Jr., Josiah Trotter and Keionte Scott.
Bain has been quiet through two games after turning heads all offseason. Alex Anzalone, brought in to settle down the linebacker group, has been described as a train wreck so far.
David Walker and Calijah Kancey are back after serious injuries a year ago, too.
And yet the defense still hasn’t looked like a Bowles defense.
That’s the bigger issue. Since the 2021 season, Bowles hasn’t had a defense finish better than 14th in DVOA.
For a coach whose reputation is built on defense, that’s the kind of number that turns into a problem fast. Tampa’s biggest successes under Bowles have come on the offensive side, where both Dave Canales and Liam Coen moved on to head coaching jobs after one year as the team’s offensive coordinator.
If Bowles is going to keep his job, his defense has to at least match the standard of the offense. Right now, it isn’t close.
The pressure was already building after last year’s 2-7 collapse down the stretch kept the Bucs out of the playoffs. Bowles survived that, but he entered 2026 on shaky ground.
With a Week 10 bye, some around the team believed a midseason change was possible if the season started badly. That meant Bowles needed a strong opening stretch to create some breathing room.
Instead, Tampa has stumbled out of the gate and looked disorganized doing it. Week 1 was defined by turnovers.
Week 2 brought a steady diet of field goals, an offense that couldn’t sustain much, and a defense that couldn’t get the stops that mattered most. Sloppy football and poor execution fall on the head coach, and the Bucs have given him too much of both already.
The schedule isn’t offering much relief, either. Tampa’s next four games are against the Minnesota Vikings, Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers, with all but the Cowboys game at home. Even splitting those four would leave the Bucs at 2-4, and a 1-5 or 0-6 start is now very much in play.
That’s why the noise around Bowles is getting louder. If Tampa couldn’t handle the Browns at home, the question becomes obvious: who exactly can it beat?
Two games isn’t usually enough to bury a coach, but Bowles’ problems go back farther than this September. If he can’t get this team back to a top-10 level on defense - the area that should define him - then he’s not meeting the standard that comes with the job.
The Buccaneers paid Baker Mayfield and Vita Vea this offseason because they expect to win now. The first two games have already shaken whatever confidence was left after last year’s collapse.
If Bowles can’t fix this quickly, he may not be around long enough to see where it goes.
In Other News...
Baker Mayfield And Todd Bowles Are Feeling Heat In Tampa Bay
Two losses to open the season have put the Buccaneers in an early hole, and the frustration was easy to hear after the latest setback against the Browns. Todd Bowles and Baker Mayfield both pointed to the same problems in their postgame comments, with penalties, missed tackles and turnovers all dragging down a team that expected to look sharper out of the gate.
Minnesota is next, and the schedule is not offering much relief as Tampa Bay tries to steady itself before the situation gets any heavier. For Bowles, the challenge is cleaning up the operation quickly. For Mayfield, it is about finding answers under the kind of pressure that tends to grow fast when September starts slipping away. [Read more 🡒]
Buccaneers Already Have A Costly Problem They Must Fix Fast
The home opener brought more frustration than relief, as the Buccaneers fell 23-19 to the Browns and slipped to 0-2 on the season. Tampa Bay had enough good moments to stay in the game, with Bucky Irving providing a spark on the ground and the run defense again holding up well, but the offense never found enough rhythm to overcome the mistakes piling up around it.
What stood out most was how the second-half pass defense unraveled, leaving the Bucs vulnerable when they needed to tighten things up. Baker Mayfields interception, along with penalties and missed tackles, made an already close game even harder to manage, and it left Tampa Bay with an early-season problem it cannot afford to ignore for long. [Read more 🡒]
Buccaneers Already Have 3 Early Problems Fans Can't Ignore
The Buccaneers second loss of the season brought a few early warning signs into focus, and the biggest one sits on offense. Baker Mayfield and offensive coordinator Zac Robinson have not yet found the kind of rhythm Tampa Bay needs through the air, and the passing game looked short on answers again against Cleveland. For a team that has built much of its identity on staying competitive in tight games, that lack of consistency is hard to ignore this early in the year.
There were other problem spots, too, including a pass-rushing effort from Rueben Bain that didnt match expectations and a tackling day from linebacker Alex Anzalone that may put his role under more scrutiny. Chase McLaughlin was one of the few bright spots, handling his chances cleanly and drilling a 59-yard field goal that went down as the third-longest in team history, but even that kind of reliability only softens the bigger concern around how many issues the Buccaneers are already sorting through. [Read more 🡒]