A Hall of Famer Who Works in the Building Says the Mood Is Not Great. Todd Bowles Says It Is Two Games.
Ronde Barber described a Buccaneers team with no defining characteristic and no urgency. His head coach argued that 0-2 determines nothing about the other 15.
Tampa Bay is 0-2 for the first time since 2014, and the most damaging assessment of why has come from someone who is inside the building every week. Ronde Barber is a Pro Football Hall of Famer and an analyst for the team's own website, which makes his verdict harder to dismiss as outside noise than almost any criticism a franchise receives in September. He did not describe a bad result. He described an absence.
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The distinction matters because it is the difference between a team playing badly and a team that has not decided what it is. Barber's complaint was that two games in, he could not name the thing this Buccaneers team does well — and that the errors were not execution failures under pressure so much as symptoms of players thinking rather than reacting.
Look, the mood is not great. There's too many mistakes. There's a lack of urgency, if you will, in my mind when I look at them going onto the field. There's got to be a little bit of a sense of a defining characteristic of your team through Week 2. I don't know what that is. It's mistakes. It's busts. It's lack of execution.— Ronde Barber, Pro Football Hall of Famer and Buccaneers team analyst (via JoeBucsFan and ProFootballTalk)
He was more specific about the secondary than about anything else, and the phrasing is the part worth keeping: "I feel like for much of the secondary, especially the coverage unit, they're so focused on what they're trying to do that they don't know how to do it now." He also rejected the standard September grace period outright — "Week 2 can't be the fifth preseason game. At some point you have to start hitting your stride." Todd Bowles, entering his fifth season as head coach, answered the same question from the opposite direction and declined to accept that two games mean anything: "I think if you lose the first two games of the year, that doesn't determine the other 15 games. Right now, we're 0-2 — we're not 0-9 or 0-11." He conceded only a change in tempo, not a change in character: "It's probably a different kind of urgency — not that you're not playing urgent already."
Inside voice, head coach, quarterback
"The mood is not great… There's a lack of urgency."
"They're so focused on what they're trying to do that they don't know how to do it now."
"We're 0-2 — we're not 0-9 or 0-11."
"It's close. You can feel it… and then just shooting ourselves in the foot."
Both losses by one score. Against Cleveland: 5.5 yards per carry gained, 1.9 allowed.
First 0-2 start since 2014. Since 2002, 12% of 0-2 teams have made the playoffs.
The margins support Bowles more than the mood does. Both defeats were one-score games. Tampa Bay lost by six at Cincinnati despite fumbling four times, and led for much of a home game against Cleveland that ended 23-19 after a lightning delay of more than two hours. Against the Browns the Buccaneers averaged 5.5 yards per carry while allowing 1.9, which is not the statistical profile of a team being physically beaten. Baker Mayfield's description of it lands somewhere between his coach and his critic: "I'm frustrated because it's close. You can feel it. You can see it. We're moving the ball at times, and then just shooting ourselves in the foot." That is a player agreeing with Barber that the mistakes are self-inflicted and with Bowles that the gap is small. The history is genuinely unkind, though. Since 2002 only twelve percent of teams starting 0-2 have reached the playoffs, and the last Buccaneers team to start 0-2 and play in January did it in 1982.
Barber is describing a vibe and Bowles is describing a margin, and both can be accurate at once. Week 3 at home is where one of them stops being true.
Vibe Or Margin
Not being able to name a team's defining characteristic in Week 2 is a real observation, and he watches them closer than almost anyone.
Two one-score losses, a positive rushing differential, and four fumbles that are fixable rather than structural.
A clean game. Not a win — a game without the busts, because that is the exact thing Barber says is missing.
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Sources: ProFootballTalk — Barber: mood is not great at Buccaneers headquarters, Buccaneers.com — Bowles: 0-2 start brings a different kind of urgency, Buccaneers.com — Mayfield on an offense that is close, Buccaneers.com — Todd Bowles coaching profile