Despite the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' disappointing season, the 2026 Super Bowl matchup between the Patriots and Seahawks offers a glimmer of hope.
Hope is something that Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans could use right about now.
Tampa is coming off a season that was once full of hope (a 6-2 start) but ended up feeling hopeless, with the Bucs losing seven of their last nine games and failing to win the NFC South for the first time this decade.
To add to the humiliation, all it would have taken for the Bucs to win the South was a winning record, with the champion Carolina Panthers finishing 8-9.
The playoffs have done little to improve the mood of Bucs fans. But this Super Bowl matchup should encourage Bucs fans that better days might be ahead.
It's become a common thought amongst fans and analysts that for a team to win a Super Bowl, it must have an offensive-minded head coach.
Before 2026, there hadn't been a defensive-minded coach in the Super Bowl since Bill Belichick's last trip seven years ago, and there hadn't been a meeting of defensive-minded HCs since Belichick and Dan Quinn of the Atlanta Falcons faced off two years earlier. When teams have a head coaching vacancy, plenty of fans immediately hope for them to land an offensive guy. The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks went another way, and it's worked out well.
Sunday's big game pits New England coach Mike Vrabel, who was the Houston Texans' defensive coordinator before becoming the head coach of the Tennessee Titans and then, ultimately, the Patriots, against Mike Macdonald, who was the Baltimore Ravens' DC before Seattle hired him in 2024.
Tampa Bay coach Todd Bowles doesn't only have a defensive background -- he's the defensive coordinator, a role similar to the one Macdonald has, where he calls the Seahawks' defensive plays despite Aden Durde being the defensive coordinator.
Two significant differences between Macdonald and Bowles are that Macdonald is almost a quarter of a century younger, and Seattle has a defensive coordinator, which Tampa doesn't.
Whether it's because Bowles works himself too hard or because his system is too complex, something isn't working with the Bucs defense, as evidenced by it finishing 20th in scoring defense and everybody agreeing that the Bucs need to take multiple defenders in this year's draft.
This year's Super Bowl matchup doesn't mean the Bucs don't need to change, but it does mean that the team going to the Super Bowl shouldn't be dismissed simply because Bowles has a defensive background.
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