After the Buccaneers blew a big lead on a Thursday night against the Falcons, he let the expletives fly regarding the team’s in-game deficiencies. Recently, Bowles provided a less profane assessment of the factors that doomed the Bucs from turning a 6-2 start into a sixth straight playoff appearance.
Via JoeBucsFan.com, Bowles recently addressed the team’s 2026 prospects in an interview with Sports Day Tampa Bay.
“If we can prepare and we can execute, and we don’t look at the names on people’s helmets, and we can play the same every week and learn how to finish off games and close games out — instead of getting a lead and just taking plays off, or not having a lead and having to come back late,” Bowles said.
While it’s not a direct admission that the team took plays off, the context makes the message clear.
“You just want to play four quarters and you want to go out there,” Bowles added. “And I think we have those types of alpha dogs on our team right now that will make this team to elevate to that. When they start coaching themselves and don’t need too much coaching on the sideline, that’s when you know you’ve arrived.”
The Buccaneers are in one of the weaker divisions in the NFL, but that could be changing. The Panthers are better. The Saints are improving. And the Falcons could be onto something.
Regardless, it’s hard for any NFL team to succeed if they take plays off. And that seems to be one of the things the 2025 Buccaneers did.
Bucs Clips
When the Buccaneers lost an OTA day due to excessive contact during practice, coach Todd Bowles didn’t say much about it. More recently, Buccaneers assistant G.M. Mike Greenberg elaborated, a bit.
“We’ve had a great offseason, a lot of energy, a lot of good stuff between the offense and defensive line,” Greenberg said on The Ronde Barber Show, via JoeBucsFan.com. “It’s been fun being out there, but with that comes sometimes a little bit too much contact. And Todd’s got to regulate it a lot after each play, which he does a great job of.”
Although every practice is recorded, not every practice is scrutinized by the league. As Greenberg explains it, the league randomly selected a practice that entailed too much contact.
“The league, really, they’ll just ask for [practice] tape randomly from teams from time to time,” Greenberg said. “They’ll get through everyone; sometimes they’ll go through teams twice. And they picked a day, if we’re being honest, we did have contact and we did deserve to lose an OTA day.”
Frankly, if the league (and the NFL Players Association) were intent on fully protecting players and enforcing the rules, both parties would assign one or more employees to watch every OTA practice. If teams know it’s random, they may be willing to roll the dice on certain days.
If it’s comprehensive, they know there’s no way to get lucky.
Defensive tackle Vita Vea didn’t practice at Buccaneers minicamp this week because he’s looking for a new contract.
Vea is heading into the final year of his contract and scheduled to make $17 million during the 2026 season, which has him lower in the ranks of defensive tackles than he’d like at this point in his career. Head coach Todd Bowles said earlier this week that the team doesn’t need to see Vea on the field right now and was similarly unconcerned about his status when asked about it on Wednesday.
“It’s not concerning,” Bowles said, via multiple reporters. “We’ve been through it before, it’s part of the business.”
Bowles was also asked if he’s confident Vea will participate in training camp if things remain unresolved. Bowles said he “cannot tell you that” and the Bucs will also be dealing with quarterback Baker Mayfield’s desire for a new deal in the coming weeks.
The Buccaneers will wrap up their offseason program a day earlier than expected.
The team was set to hold its final practice of their mandatory minicamp on Thursday, but multiple reporters share that the team has canceled that session. It’s the second change to the team’s spring practice schedule as they were also stripped of one OTA workout due to excessive contact at one of the team’s earlier practices.
Wednesday will now be their final day of work before returning for training camp at the end of July.
The Bucs won’t be doing any on-field work during that span, but there could be off-field energy devoted to trying to solve a gap in negotiations on a new contract with quarterback Baker Mayfield.
Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles has said he’d like to see quarterback Baker Mayfield take better care of himself by avoiding hits in certain situations. Mayfield doesn’t think that’s an issue.
When a reporter started to ask whether anyone on the Bucs said anything to him about the need to protect his body more, Mayfield answered emphatically that it’s a non-issue, without even letting the reporter finish the question.
“I’ve started every single game last year — for the three years. So I don’t know if that should ever be a question,” Mayfield said.
It’s true that Mayfield has started all 17 games in all three of his seasons as the Buccaneers’ quarterback, but there’s more to staying healthy than just being healthy enough to get on the field. Mayfield’s play and the Bucs’ performance as a team declined over the second half of last season, and it’s reasonable to think that if Mayfield took fewer hits, he’d be in better condition to play well down the stretch.
So it’s easy to see why Bowles would prefer that Mayfield do more to protect himself from getting hit. Even if it’s also easy to see why Mayfield doesn’t want to change his playing style.
Buccaneers defensive tackle Vita Vea is attending the team’s mandatory minicamp, avoiding a $107,911 fine for missing all three days. He is not, however, participating.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that Vea’s absence from drills is “contract-related.”
Vea, 31, is entering the final year of a $71 million contract extension he signed in January 2022. He is scheduled to make $17 million in base salary in 2026.
Vea’s $17.75 million annual average ranks 19th among defensive tackles.
Todd Bowles was asked about Vea’s absence from drills, and the Bucs coach said Vea is healthy.
“We don’t need to see him right now,” Bowles said, via joebucsfan.com.
A former first-round pick is hanging up his cleats.
The Eagles placed defensive end Joe Tryon-Shoyinka on the reserve/retired list on Tuesday, according to the league’s transaction wire.
Tryon-Shoyinka, the Bucs’ No. 32 overall pick in 2021, had signed a one-year deal with Philadelphia in late March. But, according to multiple reporters, he had not been around much during the offseason program. And now, he’s elected to move on.
Tryon-Shoyinka spent his first four seasons with the Buccaneers, recording 15.0 sacks in 66 games with 45 starts.
He signed with the Browns in the 2025 offseason and played eight games for the club before being traded to the Bears. He was on the field for another eight games for Chicago, but did not play in the club’s two postseason games.
Additionally, the league’s transaction wire notes that Philadelphia waived defensive back Brandon Johnson on Tuesday. The club also officially added safety Shaun Wade and signed receiver Erik Ezukanma.
The upcoming season of Netflix’s Quarterback show will feature Baker Mayfield, Jayden Daniels, Joe Flacco and Cam Ward. Getting Mayfield on board took some work.
Mayfield said today that he was asked to do it in the first two years that the show aired and turned it down. But Peyton Manning, a producer of the show, convinced him he could do it without it being a distraction.
“Turning it down the first few times, I think for me it was, it seems like it’s a ‘me, me, me’ thing and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be like that,” Mayfield said. “So, talking to guys that have done it in the past, continuous conversations with Peyton Manning, it’s really not that invasive.”
Mayfield said the show, which filmed mostly during the 2025 season, proved to be a welcome opportunity to capture what life is like right now for himself, his wife and their young daughter.
“Just for me a couple of sitdown interviews outside of the building and capturing some family footage,” Mayfield said. “I wanted to get a lot of that stuff captured just as the phase of life that we’re going through right now in the next the next chapter of the journey for us. But also I think, I do it to myself, but people have a persona or an idea about who I am until you really get to know me, which is fine. And so I hope that gives an insight to the fact that uh I truly love this game. I love my teammates, and I I bust my ass.”
Ultimately, he said, everyone on board respected that he wouldn’t do anything that would distract from his primary focus.
“They know that all I want to do is win,” Mayfield said. “So as long as that wasn’t going to be a distraction, as long as it wasn’t going to take away from the real goals at hand, it was going to be OK, and that they made sure of that.”
The last time Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield spoke to reporters, he said contact talks are “not anywhere close” to being where they need to be. He met with reporters on Tuesday, and he was asked where things currently stand.
“Pretty much the same,” Mayfield said, via Rick Stround of the Tampa Bay Times. “But for me, like I told you guys, it’s not gonna affect how I approach this. Things will happen when they should, but for now I’m worried about getting better each day, finishing minicamp, and this offseason program the right way, and going into training camp. So, just handle it one day at a time.”
Mayfield is on the books for $27 million this year. While some have suggested he’ll be making $40 million in 2027, $13 million was carried over from 2025.
The key number, for 2027, is his cap number in 2026. It’s $39.975 million. By rule, that means his franchise tender would be $47.97 million.
The standard quarterback franchise tender for 2026 was $43.895 million.
After finishing a one-year deal in 2023, Mayfield signed a three-year, $100 million contract to remain with the Buccaneers.
As veteran starting quarterbacks go, a broad range has been established. The low end is in the neighborhood of $20 million. The top of the market, given the new Patrick Mahomes contract, exceeds $63 million.
Some think the Buccaneers believe that, at the end of the day, they’ll offer more to keep Mayfield than another team would offer to sign him in free agency. The more immediate question is whether Mayfield will take the best offer the team makes before the start of training camp, if Mayfield intends (as he has said) to halt talks once camp opens.
As the Buccaneers and Baker Mayfield negotiate a long-term contract extension that would keep Mayfield in place as the franchise quarterback for years to come, the team wants to make sure Mayfield keeps himself healthy for years to come.
Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the Bucs are concerned that Mayfield continues to neglect his health, with nagging injuries that could be avoided coming as a result of Mayfield not getting rid of the ball, getting down or getting out of bounds.
Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles described “understanding how to get down and putting himself out of harm’s way,” as one of the things Mayfield can do to help get the Buccaneers to the Super Bowl. Mayfield has started all 17 games in all three of his seasons in Tampa Bay, but Bowles said it’s about being healthy when he plays and not having to play through aches and pains late in the season.
“No, he’s not going to miss any games, but he can take a little bit better care of himself in certain situations,” Bowles said. “I understand when he’s a yard and a half or two from a first down, but not when it’s 10 yards or eight yards from the first down when he can get up and live another day. Unless it’s fourth and 10 in Houston and the game is on the line, and I understand why he’s doing those types of things. But if we can take care of that, we’ll be fine.”
Bowles said that sliding to avoid hits when he runs the ball is an element of his game that Mayfield can improve upon.
“Getting down, he can do a little bit better job,” Bowles said. “I’m not saying all of them, but there are two or three where he’d like to have back where he can get down and not hurt himself.”
With a contract extension likely coming, the Buccaneers hope the 31-year-old Mayfield has many healthy years left in him.
