The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 6-2 coming into the bye week, and they hold that record — one of the NFL’s best — despite a slew of injuries on both sides of the ball.
The Bucs have missed an unbelievable number of players at every turn, including almost every starter on offense at some point in the year and multiple defensive players. Despite that, head coach Todd Bowles has been cooking, and he’s fielded a very competitive defense and gotten a stretch of MVP-level play out of his quarterback in Baker Mayfield.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed, as his former head coach in Tampa Bay, Bruce Arians, sang some of his praises during a recent media appearance. But could all of that amount to a potential Coach of the Year bid from Bowles?
Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians against the Philadelphia Eagles during the first half in a NFC Wild Card playoff / Kim Klement-Imagn Images
Arians appeared on the Pat McAfee show (as he does), and he was asked to create an All-NFL team after the first half of the year. He was asked to choose an AFC and NFC coach, and he went with the head coaches of two of his former teams — the Bucs and the Indianapolis Colts.
“In the AFC I’ve got Shane Steichen and he’s doing an amazing job with Daniel Jones,” Arians said. ”
In the NFC I’ve got Todd Bowles. 6-2 with a plethora of injuries — nobody needs the bye week more than they do right now, so those are my two coaches at the halfway point.”
Arians’ love for Bowles makes a lot of sense. He’s had Bowles on his staff during his last two coaching jobs, the Bucs and the Cardinals, and Arians still currently serves as a senior football consultant for the Buccaneers in the front office.
That being said, he still makes a good argument about Bowles — Bowles has been able to get to 6-2 on the year despite a massive amount of injuries on both sides of the ball. Additionally, Tampa Bay’s defense is third in the league in sacks and has the fourth-best turnover differential in the league, which can be attested to how ferocious his defense has been at taking the ball away.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles on the sidelines during the first half of a game against the Seattle Seahawks / Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
Believe it or not, Bowles is pretty far down the list when it comes to coach of the year odds. According to FanDuel, Steichen is first with +105 odds, but you have to go all the way down to T-13 for Bowles at +5000 (tied with Jim Harbaugh and Zac Taylor).
Coach of the Year is a suggestive award, but it’s often given to coaches who turn a team around from being bad to good — in that case, coaches like Steichen and Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, another high favorite, make sense. But dealing with adversity is a big part of it, too, and there’s a good argument that Bowles has had to fight through more of it on the injury front than anyone. He’s 6-2 despite that, so he should probably be a much bigger favorite than he currently is.
The Bucs will get to rest during this bye week, as Arians mentioned, but then they’ll be right back at it in Week 10 vs. the vaunted New England Patriots. If Bowles wants to win Coach of the Year, a win like that would go a long way.
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