Todd Bowles Had an Awkward Explanation for Why Buccaneers Didn’t Call Final Timeout vs. Lions

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ season came to an end this past weekend, as they fell to the Detroit Lions in the divisional round of the playoffs.

It was a tightly contested game that Tampa Bay certainly had a shot at winning, with the score knotted 10–10 at the half and 17–17 at the start of the fourth quarter.

But the Lions made their move, scoring on back-to-back drives to start the final period and take a 31–17 lead. While the Buccaneers got one of those touchdowns back, quarterback Baker Mayfield threw an interception on Tampa Bay’s final do-or-die drive to effectively end the game. Lions win, 31–23.

While Mayfield’s interception with 1:33 left on the clock certainly felt like a definitive end to the game, there was still a way for the Buccaneers to eke another possession out of the clock.

Tampa Bay had just one timeout left, but the Lions rushed their kneeldowns to end the game, with Goff taking a knee on third down with 36 seconds still on the clock. Had the Buccaneers called their final timeout here, Detroit would have been forced to decide to either kick a roughly 48-yard field goal to extend its lead, or punt and hope to pin the Buccaneers deep while there was still some time to play.

Fans were in disbelief that Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles kept the timeout in his pocket, instead allowing the Lions to kneel the game away.

“They already had the field goal lined up, and there would’ve been about 12 seconds left on the clock to end the ball game,“ Bowles said after the game. “We weren’t going to come back from that.“

Bowles’s comment assumes that the Lions would have made their field goal—never a lock in high-pressure situations, although certainly more likely than not.

On Monday, Bowles doubled down on his explanation. After a reporter asked if Bowles’s decision was rooted in sportsmanship—having not called the timeout on first down—Bowles instead reiterated that the game was over.

“They were in field-goal range, would have had 12 seconds calculated after using that timeout to come back from it, then we would’ve been down 11 points,” Bowles told reporters. “It’s kind of pointless. You kind of know when the game is over, and the game was over.”

While the Buccaneers’ hopes of winning surely would have remained slim had Bowles used the timeout, his explanation still likely leaves fans wanting more. If you have a shot at extending the game in the postseason, you’ve got to take it.