What went wrong with the Bucs?
Most fans point a huge finger of blame on coaching. Todd Bowles did, too. That’s why he fired a bunch of assistant coaches, including his offensive coordinator and special teams chief.
Lavonte David opened up on the subject during his visit to The Arena yesterday.
Why the collapse, Lavonte?
“A lot of injuries, the main thing. And defensively, we had just a lot of moving parts and we just wasn’t the same page together as a unit like we always used to be,” David said. And when you have that going on and the offense depending on you, everything is going to spiral out of control. People have all their speculations and stuff like that, but what I loved about it as a team, even though we’re going through all that, we still were trying to fight and figure out a way how to win these games.”
David went on to say the Bucs in tight games late last season would “freak out and act like we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Is it on coaching? That kind of excuse is not in David’s DNA. “I would never blame a coach, you got to be able execute,” he said.
In fact, David said players let Bowles down and took notice of his infamous public meltdown in early December.
“You see Bowles in some clip, he’s going off and you never see him go off like that,” David said. “He’s pissed off. Like it was a shock for us. We felt like we let him down. When the fans look in, you know everybody’s blaming [Bowles] and stuff like that. But all along as a player being in the locker room, being a leader in that locker room, like a majority of stuff was on us, we just wasn’t doing what we were supposed to do as as football team.”
David added that he’s been in locker rooms that were falling apart and pointing fingers, but David said the 2025 Bucs absolutely were not that team.
Joe loves listening to the new candid, post-career David.
As for the Bucs’ mental toughness, David’s comments leave Joe encouraged that the Bucs have a lot of new blood on the roster and in the coaching ranks, and that there will be a couple of new core leaders in the locker room.
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