There are plenty of fans of the Florida Gators who double as fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the 2026 season for the Bucs currently has a ton of parallels to Florida’s 2025 campaign:
A lame-duck coach who should have been let go last season gets off to the disastrous start everyone predicted, and even when they do win, some mind-numbing coaching decisions still make it hard to be in a celebratory mood.
Todd Bowles and his Bucs squad knocked off Dallas last night in a massive upset, even though he did his best to give the game away, immediately triggering flashbacks to Florida’s win over Texas last season.
Tampa Bay’s win over Dallas draws parallels to Florida’s 2025 win over Texas
Virtually no one in America picked Tampa Bay to beat Dallas, and yet with eight minutes left, the Bucs found themselves up by 14 points, with the ball, facing a 4th and goal at the one yard line. The Bucs went for it, were stopped, and it led to Dallas having a shot to pull off a miracle comeback. Ultimately, the Cowboys had the ball bounce off their hands with 1:22 left, resulting in an interception that sealed the game.
But Bucs fans' main talking point afterward was Bowles' decision to go for it. In a strictly macro sense, going for it in that spot is the right choice if the goal is solely to maximize your points. What didn’t seem to be factored in is that had Tampa Bay just kicked a field goal, it would have been a 17 point lead with 8:36 to go.
AKA, Tampa Bay would have had a three-possession lead versus a two-possession lead by getting stopped. Had the Bucs converted and scored the touchdown, it still would have been a three-possession game with 8:36 to go. Even if Dallas had scored a TD instead of throwing an interception, they still would have needed to recover an onside kick with less than a minute to play.
After the game, Bowles was asked about the decision and he said:
“We talked about it. It was less than a yard and the way we were running the football, we were trying to put the game away.”
No discussion of it being a two possession game versus a three possesion game. Just a simplistic explination that does little to showcase whether Bowles understood what was happening.
And this is where the parallels to Florida’s old coach, AKA The Man in the Black Polo, start to come into play.
Last year, when Florida beat Texas, there was a head-scratching moment when it looked like Florida took a timeout so there wouldn’t be a ten-second run-off, which would have benefited the Longhorns at the time.
Florida’s old coach was asked about the moment after the game, and he said:
“The clock stops because our helmet came off, so we wanted to get our best tackle back in the game."
Technically, he was correct, but he explained it so poorly that it made many wonder whether he had actually considered the whole situation. Like last night’s win for Tampa Bay over Dallas, Florida’s win over Texas was filled with 4th-quarter moments that made it feel like the Gators were actively trying to give the game away.
What was hard for Gator fans last year and is tough for Buccaneer fans this year is that these small moments aren’t in a vacuum. They are part of a repeated pattern of poor decisions that often blow up in their face. And it’s the inability to articulate the thought process, combined with a complete lack of passion on the sidelines, that leads fans to want to move on, even after a big-time win.
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