Todd Bowles Explained What He Learned About The 2024 Bucs
March 2nd, 2025
Discovery.
Well, we certainly know one takeaway Todd Bowles had about his Bucs last year: They needed a lot more takeaways.
Bowles, in his various combine media availabilities last week at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis, said several times the Bucs need “ballhawks.”
But there was something else Bowles learned about last season: He found unexpected depth.
“I thought [Kaevon] Merriweather came back and did a heck of a job,” Bowles began. “I thought [Christian] Izien carried us probably halfway through the season when he was healthy. I thought ‘J-Mac’ (Jalen McMillan) came on late in the season from a rookie standpoint.
“We had a lot of young guys stand up, so that was encouraging. … Overall, I thought the competition part of it was great.”
Bowles also found out he had a solid backup tackle in Justin Skule, who is a pending free agent. No, Skule did not have a good game starting at Detroit after Luke Goedeke went down with a concussion and missed five games. He got worked by Aidan Hutchinson. Badly. There was no sugarcoating it.
However, Skule got better and was a key cog in the offense for nearly a quarter of the season.
“The big thing, when Luke [Goedeke] went down and ‘Skuley’ (Justin Skule) had to step in, that was huge,” Bowles said. “Nobody really talked about Luke being down for a few weeks.”
Along with the play of defensive backs Kaevon Merriweather and Christian Izien, Bowles liked how backups exceled when the Bucs needed them last season.
“I thought those guys got some experience and really helped us in the end and developed some depth,” Bowles said. “Going into this year, that’s something we can hopefully build on.”
If Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht has another draft like he’s had the past two years, the Bucs ought to have loads of depth.
But definitely get starters. For example, an edge rusher, an inside linebacker and maybe a corner, too. Defense, defense, defense.
March 2nd, 2025 at 11:13 am
Free agent DE
Rd 1 – LB
Rd 2 – DT/DE
Rd 3 – Corner
More of the same and a WR
Please
March 2nd, 2025 at 11:32 am
Agree with 74, but I would swap the 2nd and 3rd order. Splitting hairs though. Need both of them.
March 2nd, 2025 at 11:48 am
74 Bucs Fan … Nailed it, as long as the DT/DE is a beast. We’re too light in the middle; need someone who can rotate in with Vea, get push & control the interior. Might need a 2nd ILB and a Safety in there also, as well as a punter.
March 2nd, 2025 at 12:08 pm
Big fan of yours DR. Appreciate your solid posts, and many of you long timers on here.
March 2nd, 2025 at 12:13 pm
Defense Rules, I think it’s gonna be fun how this draft pans out. What I really want to see is our defense play like our offense. Aggressive! So what if you get beat on another 10 TDS a year jumping passes. Maybe you pick off 11 more. QBs throw picks trying to score. Runners fumble trying for that extra yard. You don’t want to get beat on TD passes or fumble or throw picks but the alternative is chancing losing your aggression. A fine line. I think Licht and Bowles want to move more to the aggressive side of the line defensively. Last week’s great reports by the Joes confirms that.
March 2nd, 2025 at 12:16 pm
I mean drafting another stud DT and Middle linebacker and cornerback will speed up that process!
March 2nd, 2025 at 12:29 pm
Maybe corner? Maybe?
From a numbers standpoint, CB is need #1. We can’t count on Dean at all. Ad he should be released. So we only have Zyon.
Everyone is freaked about edge, and I expect we’ll draft one, but I also think Disney and Braswell will take jumps this year.
March 2nd, 2025 at 12:30 pm
*Diaby (not Disney… friggin’ autocorrect)
March 2nd, 2025 at 12:46 pm
” So what if you get beat on another 10 TDS a year jumping passes. Maybe you pick off 11 more.”
I get the sentiment but if the Bucs gave up 10 more TD passes than last year, they would have given up the most in the league. Then IF they get those INTs, the offense isn’t guaranteed to score.
I’d rather have a D that gets off the field on third down. I think that comes from having more disciplined coverage at all levels that allows the aggression to come from the defensive line.
March 2nd, 2025 at 12:56 pm
f Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht has another draft like he’s had the past two years, the Bucs ought to have loads of depth.
But definitely get starters. For example, an edge rusher, an inside linebacker and maybe a corner, too. Defense, defense, defense.
a bit contradictory its hard to have loads of depth when you need to get starters at 3 important positions
March 2nd, 2025 at 1:11 pm
StickinUp4Centers, I knew that didn’t add up when I wrote it. And you make good points about disciplined coverage at all levels. My point remains we’ve got to have more gamblers, or ballhawks, on the defensive side of the ball. It’ll cost us, that extra chance taking, but the emphasis has to be on making plays as opposed to stopping plays.
March 2nd, 2025 at 1:19 pm
StickinUp4Centers, dangit, it came out wrong again! Of course defensively the emphasis has to be on stopping plays. I drove 7 hours this morning and can’t properly explain what I mean. But you guys know what I’m getting at. I’m going to take a nap.
March 2nd, 2025 at 1:24 pm
Kenton … Todd Bowles loves takeaways but he hates getting burned deep, and his tactics reflect that IMO (defenders playing off in zone all too often). It’s frustrating; I keep thinking that if the Bucs’ defense had to play the Bucs’ offense every game, they’d lose just about every one. Thankfully that’s not the case, and very few teams have receivers of the
March 2nd, 2025 at 1:24 pm
Give Dennis the MLB position full time. His injury created a mess there. No more splitting reps there. Give it to Dennis and draft a developmental MLB in the later rounds. The early rounds should be for CB and Edge.
March 2nd, 2025 at 1:38 pm
Kenton … Todd Bowles loves takeaways but he hates getting burned deep, and his tactics reflect that IMO (defenders playing off in zone all too often). It’s frustrating; I keep thinking that if the Bucs’ defense had to play the Bucs’ offense every game, they’d lose just about every one. Thankfully that’s not the case, and very few teams have receivers equivalent to Evans, Godwin, McMillan, Otton, White & Bucky. Nor do most QBs average over 70% completions like Baker did last season.
I’m convinced our biggest problem is that we need more consistent pressure on the opposing QB coming from the middle of our DLine, and we need to be able to get that using just 4 guys (3 isn’t enough most of the time, and so we send 1-2 blitzers to augment).
Look back at 2023. Bucs blitzed 341 times on the season. The top blitzers? Devin White (75). Christian Izien (56). Lavonte David (51). Antoine Winfield (30). So 4 ILBs/Secondary had 212 of our 341 blitzes … 62%. Those same 4 players had a total of 13 sacks (and probably not all of those came off of blitzes). My guess is that there were a LOT of completions in there because of the territory vacated by the blitzers. And a lot of them were easy completions like we’ve seen time & time again.
March 2nd, 2025 at 2:56 pm
In my opinion, we need two CB in this draft. DE is big, LB just as important.
S and DL are depth needs. WR and TE also should be considered.
Hard to say what sequence to go with until free agency is done. But here’s my thought. Mind you, this is baring a trade for more picks.
RD1 CB
RD2 DE
RD3 LB
RD4 WR
RD5 S
RD7 DL
March 2nd, 2025 at 2:57 pm
I’m sure I’m in the minority but I would prefer the bucs went back to a base 4-3 defense. Our defensive ends would then have more responsibility in rushing the QB and less responsibility dropping into coverage. It’s time to change things up.
March 2nd, 2025 at 3:45 pm
Linebackers are the chess pieces Bowles can use, can be used many ways. I believe it depends on who’s available when we draft, I can see either LB, DE, or interior D lineman going 1 and 2 as long as they are the real deal. If a DB is far and away the best available then fine but again it depends on who they target in FA. Health & experience means everything and I think Dennis & Braswell will make that jump this year, Dennis was showing signs of it before IR.
March 2nd, 2025 at 3:58 pm
Funny he didn’t mention CBs Hayes and Funderfart. I’m not sure Bryce Hall can go a full season. Can’t count on Dean or Hall.
March 2nd, 2025 at 4:17 pm
The biggest problem is too obvious to continue to beat on. The aggression and ball-hawkingness has been totally coached out of the DBs. They’re petrified of getting beat deep. You can’t intercept a pass when your 7 yards from the passing target when the ball arrives. Unless we played Will Levis every week, most NFL QBs, even the backups, are accurate enough to hit a 10 yard wide window.
Maybe our awesome head coach will tell his defensive coordinator to tighten things up next season and not wait until the second half. Perhaps with some prodding from the GM. Perhaps when it becomes obvious that we are wasting a generationally talented offense with a defensive half and half coach coordinator.
March 2nd, 2025 at 5:57 pm
ToddBowles1…. “TE should be considered”????. You watch the games? If we draft a TE for the 4th year in a row, this place will explode! 88,87,82are solid.
March 2nd, 2025 at 7:45 pm
Don’t listen to what Todd says in the press. When asked why in the last few critical games of the season, his defense tightened up, his answer was “I don’t know why.”
Either way you interpret that, its an answer best ignored.
March 2nd, 2025 at 9:05 pm
Hard to get picks when the underneath zone is always wide open. Even Cousins, who was benched for incompetence, ripped us apart in the open zones.
I’d rather play tight and give up the long one from time. At least the defense has a chance for ints and, who knows, might even force a punt from time to time.
The ‘bend but don’t break’ philosophy is maddening!