Todd Bowles is the NFL head coach in the most trouble right now, and it is not a close call. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 0-3, they were a popular pick to win the NFC South, and they have played like one of the five or six worst teams in the league getting there. Green Bay visits Raymond James Stadium on Sunday.
Every list that tracks this agrees. Last Word on Sports’ Week 4 hot seat rankings put Bowles first, with his firing probability jumping from 45 percent to 63 percent after the Vikings loss, based on odds from Covers.com. CBS Sports asked its NFL writers who the league’s first coaching change of 2026 would be, and two of them picked Bowles. Tyler Sullivan wrote that Bowles’ seat was “arguably the hottest in the NFL coming into the season,” and he flagged Tampa Bay’s Week 5 Thursday night game against Dallas as a possible trigger point.
Thirty-Five And Thirty-Six
Bowles is 35-36 as Tampa Bay’s head coach, with a 1-3 record in the playoffs, now in his fifth season on the job. Stephen A. Smith called that mark “barely average,” said it was “not acceptable,” and said “something has got to give.” That is hard to argue with when the NFC South has been sitting there for the taking the entire time.
The recent run is uglier than the career number. Tampa Bay has gone 2-10 over its last 12 games dating back into last season. The Week 3 loss was 23-16 at home to Minnesota, a game that included an 86-yard punt return touchdown allowed and a holding penalty that erased an 85-yard Chris Godwin Jr. touchdown catch. Those are coaching-detail losses, not talent losses.
No Baker Mayfield To Bail Him Out
Mayfield dislocated his right thumb on his final play against the Vikings, an interception thrown on a fourth-down scramble inside two minutes. Bowles said afterward that his quarterback will miss at least three weeks. The replacement is Jalon Daniels, an undrafted free agent whose NFL debut amounted to 28 seconds and a Hail Mary interception.
Mayfield signed a three-year extension with Tampa Bay this offseason, so this roster was assembled to win now, not to develop anybody. Climbing out of an 0-3 hole with an undrafted rookie at quarterback, against Green Bay and then Dallas on a short week, is not a realistic ask of any coaching staff.
The Call: Bowles Does Not Finish The Season
There is one serious argument for him surviving. The Glazer family has never fired a head coach in the middle of a season, and Bowles signed a multiyear extension in June 2025 whose terms the team never disclosed, so nobody outside the building knows how long his deal runs. Ownership that writes a check like that tends to want to be right about it.
To be clear about what has not happened: no reporting says the Glazers have made any decision, and Bowles is still the head coach. But an 0-5 start that ends on national television with a half-empty stadium, which is exactly where this is pointed if Sunday goes badly, is a different problem than any the Glazers have had with him before.
So here is the verdict. Bowles will not coach the Buccaneers in 2027, and the only real question is whether the move comes in October or in January. Take October.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
