Home Opinion Editorial Buccaneers’ Bowles On Starters Playing vs Atlanta

Buccaneers' head coach Todd Bowles / Greg Auman Fox Sports

Buccaneers’ Bowles On Starters Playing vs Atlanta

January 4, 2023

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have made an art form of late game heroics this season. This is proved by the Bucs having late game comebacks in four of their last five games.

That scenario played out again last Sunday against the Carolina Panthers. Bucs’ quarterback Tom Brady led the team back from a 21-10 deficit in the fourth quarter to clinch the division. Just like they drew it up.

Now that the Buccaneers have clinched the division, their regular season finale against the Falcons has no bearing on playoff seeding. So naturally most talking heads expect the team to rest their starters right? Not so fast my friend.

Bucs’ head coach Todd Bowles addressed this Monday,

“Right now I’m planning on playing them,” Bowles said on Monday. “We’ll see as the week goes forward, but we can get better at a lot of things that we need to work on, and we don’t need to take our foot off the gas.”

Bowles believes the team would benefit more from the starters playing as well as build momentum. But understands injuries are part of the game.

“I mean, it’s football. You can’t play 16 games and then worry about the 17th.” Bowles stated. “You can’t play three preseason games and 16 games and practice every day and say you may get hurt in the 17th game. You can get hurt the first week, you can get hurt in training camp. If you worry about that, you’re probably going to get hurt anyway.”

Bowles continued…

“We signed up to play football and coach football, that’s what we’re going to do. Everybody that loves football, that loves to play, will play the game. Injuries are going to happen. That doesn’t mean it happens in Week 17, the playoff game or preseason. You’ve just got to coach it and you’ve got to play it. If you worry about injuries, you probably don’t need to be playing this sport.”

Coach Bowles isn’t wrong, this team, especially the offense can use as much playing time as possible. But the issue is injuries, or the potential of them. The Buccaneers know all about dealing with injuries, especially this season. The question is are they willing to gamble on this for a game that has no real meaning?