On Monday, Bucs coach Todd Bowles stepped on a potential rake when discussing the reasons for linebacker Devin White not playing on Sunday at Green Bay. On Wednesday, Bowles tried to step off.
It started when Bowles, while trying to downplay suggestions that White chose not to play after he was told he’d be rotating with K.J. Britt, explained that White didn’t play because he was injured.
“Devin told me Friday he couldn’t play, or Saturday or Friday he couldn’t play,” Bowles said Monday. “So K.J. started.”
Lost in that explanation is that the Bucs acquired a duty to downgrade White from questionable to out. They didn’t.
It was no surprise, then, that Bowles tried to thread the needle on Wednesday, characterizing what he had described as a done deal on Friday or Saturday as not a done deal.
“I’m gonna say this one time,” Bowles said when asked about White’s injury status before the Week 15 game. “He was medically cleared to play. Then he indicated that he didn’t feel right, and informed me that he couldn’t play. He couldn’t go. We had ongoing conversations until Sunday morning. I decided to deactivate him. When he got to the stadium he found out he was inactive.”
It’s a subtle but significant difference. On Monday, Bowles indicated that the decision that White wouldn’t play due to injury was made on Friday or Saturday. On Wednesday, after it became clear that the Bucs stepped into an injury-reporting issue, Bowles painted it as something that wasn’t finalized until it was time to name the game-day inactives.
None of it matters if the league is willing to accept Wednesday’s explanation and to ignore Monday’s. We asked the league office for comment on Tuesday and received no response. We’ve asked again; it’s a safe bet that there will either be no response or an explanation that accepts what Bowles said on Wednesday.
