Todd Bowles sends clear message to Buccaneers team

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have played some good football the last four years. They've won the division every year and made the playoffs, and they won a playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles in 2023. But it hasn't always been smooth sailing for them, either.

The Buccaneers have gone through periods of inconsistent play, ending up at 4-7 and 4-6 in 2023 and 2024, respectively. And while the Bucs ended up climbing out of both of those deficits, it didn't always look pretty, and Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles is looking to change that.

Bowles spoke at the NFL annual meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, and he mentioned that he wasn't satisfied with the way the team went out in the playoffs and that the Buccaneers are lacking something that he thinks they need to have — killer instinct.

"We’ve got to play not even better football at the end, but we’ve got to have killer instinct," Bowles said. "We’ve got to try to blow people out and try to win the division instead of it going down to the last week.”

Bowles mentioned that this instinct wouldn't come from coaching — the players here him talk just about every day, he said — but that it has to come from within themselves through what he called "verbal accountability."

"It’s more accountability. It’s more accountability in practice and competing against each other," Bowles said. "You develop that through the spring and the summer through a chemistry standpoint to make sure you’re getting your point across to have more competitive things in training camp or what have you and doing little things like that to help them along.”

While coaching certainly does have a hand in how players do this, Bowles seems to be looking for more of it among his players. They'll have a chance to do that when the offseason begins toward the end of may, and hopefully, they'll play a more punishing brand of football in 2025.