Buccaneers HC Todd Bowles Goes Public After Losing Tom Brady, Leonard Fournette and Other Veteran Players in the Same Off-Season

When seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady retired for good at the end of the last season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were sure to face an uphill task to replace him. And it’s not just Brady who left, with multiple veterans released or testing free agency. Head Coach Todd Bowles has a solution.

The Bucs ended the 2022-23 season with an 8-10 losing record, crashing out in the wild-card round of the playoffs against the Dallas Cowboys. However, Todd Bowles has a map of the road ahead. And it’s based on chemistry.

Todd Bowles is on a rebuild without Tom Brady in the pocket

Former No. 1 overall pick Baker Mayfield agreed to an $8.5 million one-year contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, becoming the official successor to TB12. However, it’s not just the quarterback position that needs filling with other vets like running back Leonard Fournette also looking for a new destination.

Fournette told the Tampa Bay Times that he wanted to be released and that there was no bad blood between him and the Tampa Bay organization.

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The Bucs also fired Byron Leftwich from the offensive coordinator after the season and put in Dave Canales for the job. That’s a new quarterback and a new offensive coordinator without some of the key veterans. And Todd Bowles doesn’t have an option but to move ahead with what he has.

“When you lose Tom Brady, everybody’s gotta look at it differently,” Bowles said during his press conference at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. “There’ll be a new culture and chemistry created every year. No matter whether we had stayed the same or not. But we can create our own culture here winning and that comes with working together, working hard, and understanding what we have to do to win.”

What Bowles misses the most about Brady

After winning six rings in Foxborough, Brady came to Tampa Bay and brought the Lombardi trophy to south Florida in his very first year. And after two more seasons with playoff appearances and NFC South divisional titles, TB12 hung it up for real after his pseudo-retirement last year.

“Losing a guy like Tom Brady, you have to revamp your offense. I think the chemistry is going to be very important in the off-season. The biggest thing he brought is the winning culture,” Bowles said about what he misses the most about his QB.

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With Derek Carr now in New Orleans, and the Carolina Panthers tentatively going for a top QB with their first overall pick, Bowles and Baker will need a lot of chemistry and magic if they want to keep dominating their division.