Tampa Bay's Todd Bowles tunes out critics, focusing only on his team's mission. Can his strategy weather the storm?
Tampa Bay Buccaneers boss Todd Bowles might be coaching for his job.
If that weren't true before Sunday's 23-20 loss in Carolina, which dropped Tampa out of a tie for first place in the NFC South and under .500 -- this team started 6-2, remember, then surely it's obvious now.
At this point, some are wondering whether the Bucs should have fired Bowles at the end of last season and promoted then-offensive coordinator Liam Coen, who is doing Coach of the Year-level work for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Does Bowles hear the noise? Probably.
Does it bother him? He says it doesn't.
"I listen to nothing but music when I leave here," Bowles told reporters Tuesday. "I made a pact when I started coaching to never listen to anything else.
"So outside noise to me is just outside noise. It’s the people in this building, what we talk about, what we do in this building. We’ve been through this before. We understand where we are. We just have to execute and play our game."
Still, the noise is there, and people are wondering if Bowles is entering his final days as coach of the Buccaneers.
But as ESPN's Dan Graziano pointed out, the Bucs have won a lot of games under Bowles, so firing him might be an overreaction.
"This would be the first season in Bowles' four-year tenure as Bucs head coach that they didn’t win the division, which you'd think would buy him some grace," Graziano wrote. "But this team had higher hopes than just another division title.
ESPN's NFL insider said the Bucs thought this season's roster had a legitimate chance to contend for a Super Bowl, at least before injuries handicapped those lofty expectations.
"But the offense hasn’t improved with better health, and the defense isn’t generating any kind of pass rush. Just last week, Tampa Bay pulled outside linebacker Jason Pierre-Paul out of retirement to see if he could help. So, a couple of ugly games in Weeks 17 and 18 could make things very dicey for Bowles. But given his track record of success in Tampa and what seems to be viewed as a bit of a thin crop of head coaching candidates, I’m going to lean 'overreaction' here and guess Bowles gets a mulligan."
As Graziano alluded to, a division title wouldn't be enough for a team that looked like a Super Bowl contender for the first half of this season.
But winning the NFC South would go a long way toward keeping Bowles in Tampa. Because the Bucs have the tiebreaker over Carolina, and one of their last two games is against Carolina, Tampa Bay will win the division as long as the team wins out.