The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were heavily picked to beat the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, but things didn’t go their way — and Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles put much of the loss on his team’s lack of effort. The Saints won 23-13, and if not for a garbage time touchdown pass it wouldn’t have been even that close.
“If wouldn’t have mattered if we had played a good team, a bad team, a college team or a high school team, we wouldn’t have won the game with the way we played today,” Bowles said bluntly after the game when discussing the loss with reporters.
Both teams took the field from wildly different circumstances; Tampa Bay had won four games in a row while the Saints were coming off an embarrassing loss in prime time last week. But none of that mattered after kickoff. The Saints brought more intensity and played with greater urgency, and that made the difference.
Is it enough to get them to the playoffs? No, but it’s a good start. The Saints tripped themselves up too often early in the year. Now they’re in a position where they’ll need help from other teams to go the distance and clinch a playoff berth. But it all starts by beating the Bucs, which they did, and rallying in the regular season finale with a win over the Atlanta Falcons. As Allen has been telling the team each week, all they can do is control what they can control.
