Late in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 30-24 overtime defeat to the Kansas City Chiefs, coach Todd Bowles spoke about one of his contentious decisions.
With 33 seconds remaining in regulation, Bowles controversially called a timeout after a great play put the Buccaneers in a goal-to-go situation. Some questioned that because it gave the Chiefs time to settle and guaranteed them more time if and when the Buccaneers scored a touchdown that tied the game.
Bowles stated on Tuesday that he wanted to resolve the situation before the offense attempted to punch it in because he felt the Buccaneers had lost their composure.
“We had to call a timeout so we could regain our composure and avoid going down and getting a penalty and being backed up and trying to make it tough on ourselves because we wanted to drain the clock and bring it down,” Bowles told reporters. “With time running out, we most certainly did not want to leave (Patrick) Mahomes. Even though we were aware that he had three timeouts, we felt compelled to call it and tend to ourselves in order to score.
In this instance, the Buccaneers did escape punishment. The defense held and prevented Mahomes from driving downfield and reaching field goal range, and they ultimately scored. But in the end, it did not matter because the Chiefs marched downfield for a touchdown after winning the overtime coin toss.
After the late touchdown, Bowles received harsh criticism for not going for two. One has to wonder if he was also a little concerned about the team’s poise in that situation, even though he attributed it to another cause.
