Beneath Bucs coach Todd Bowles’ calm is his storm

TAMPA — You think you know Todd Bowles, the new head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

You have watched him on the sidelines of the NFL for years. The stern but stoic face, arms folded, eyes narrowed and focused straight ahead.

Bowles is always in control, exuding calm amid the chaos, a steely confidence that is contagious.

You think you know Bowles, but it turns out, you really don’t.

Bowles can cut a player to ribbons with his sharp sarcasm. When you have won a Super Bowl as a player, executive and coach, some bragging rights come with it.

“He’s got a wit that’s unbelievable,” said Bruce Arians, who retired from coaching in March to become the assistant to the general manager and handed Bowles the head coaching reins with Tom Brady at quarterback. “He cuts with a knife and it’s sharp, too.”

The surprising thing might be that despite his placid demeanor, Bowles says he has to work at tamping down an inferno of emotion raging within.

“I used to go off the handle quite a bit, especially when I was at Grambling,” said Bowles, who began his coaching career as an assistant for Doug Williams at Morehouse College, then Grambling State. “But when I go off the handle, it’s like it’s hard to go back down and the players react differently. They’re more timid. And the calmer I am, the more comfortable they are for playing.

“So I only allow myself to go off the handle two times a year. I mean that. I haven’t used one here. Yelling is not me going off the handle. There’s a whole different level ... and believe me it’s not a pretty sight. I’m trying to protect me from me.”

The darker side of Bowles has yet to come out this season, although he did drop some choice words when laying into his team following a lackluster practice early in training camp.

“I’ve always known he’s got it in him,” Arians said.

To be clear, Bowles is not just here to win; he wants to obliterate his opponents.

“My demeanor on the sideline I may be calm, but on the inside, I’m trying to cut your throat out,” Bowles said.

A second chance

Bowles is much more buttoned up in news conferences. Unlike Arians, he rarely calls out players by name for mistakes and is prone to coach-speak.

But one-on-one, Bowles is relaxed and verbose about almost any subject.

There are layers to Bowles. He speaks freely about being raised with his three siblings by a single mother in Elizabeth, N.J. He has four kids of his own: Todd Jr., Troy, Tyson and Sydni. Todd Jr. is a football player at Rutgers while Troy is one of the top-rated linebackers in the nation at Jesuit High School and is committed to Georgia.

He never really coached his sons until COVID-19 struck in 2020. “It’s unbelievable,” Bowles said of their accomplishments. “I let them play until they got to the point where they were serious and asked me to show them things.”

Bowles was talked into coaching by Williams, a teammate with Washington when the team won Super Bowl 22. But he has had many influences on his career, including coaches such as Arians, Bill Parcells and Wade Phillips.

But first, Bowles feels grateful to Arians for the fact that he is a head coach again after four seasons in that role with the New York Jets, where he compiled a 24-40 record.

At 58, Bowles believed he would get another chance to run an NFL team. But he didn’t think it would be this team or this way.

In the past few seasons, he interviewed for head coaching jobs with the Vikings, Bears, Raiders and Falcons. He was a finalist for none of them.

“I thought I would have opportunities,” Bowles said. “... Once that cycle kind of passes you’re right back into football all of a sudden. Doing the interviews this year, there were some I thought were good places and some I thought wasn’t a good fit and I was very content being here.

“I’m happy here, my family was happy here. When you get that late in the process, you don’t think about it at all. It was a shock that (the Bucs job) came so late but at the same time, we had so much in place that we had done over the years, it made it easy to move into.”

Bowles inherits a coaching staff that includes assistants he has either worked or played with, some going back almost 40 years to his days as a cornerback at Temple where he played for Arians.

Not only does the NFL have a poor history of hiring Black head coaches, but the trend is also to favor assistants on the offensive side of the football. Losing teams often are drafting a quarterback and want a play-caller to develop him.

“Maybe because they get younger going for that quarterback out of college now,” Bowles said. “But if you look at the Super Bowl history, there’s a lot of defensive head coaches that have won a ton of them. (Bill) Belichick, Parcells, and (Mike) Tomlin and (Bill) Cowher and (Pete) Carroll. You can go on and on. ...

“Defensive coaches know a lot about football, too. I take nothing away from offensive coaches, but we see the game and we know how to manage it the same way.”

Doing things his way

Bowles admits he wasn’t quite ready to manage all the things that crossed his desk as a first-time head coach of the Jets.

This time, he says, he is much more prepared. He also clearly has a better football team, although he managed to go 10-6 in his first year with the Jets, narrowly missing the playoffs with vagabond veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback. Then the Jets spun the roulette wheel and had quarterbacks such as Bryce Petty, Geno Smith and Josh McCown start games until drafting Sam Darnold No. 3 overall in 2018.

“He had it going at the Jets when he had a quarterback,” Arians said of Bowles. “Everybody — when you have a quarterback ― you have a chance. Then he didn’t have control of his roster. Man, you’ve got to have at least a say in it. Bill Parcells always said, ‘Let me buy the groceries if I’m doing all the cooking.’”

Ask Bowles what he learned from coaching the Jets and he will respond, “How much time you got?”

He admits to being unprepared, like any first-time head coach, for all the decisions that have to be made on a daily basis.

“The main thing is the experience,” Bowles said. “... The second time around, you have the answers to the test and you don’t even sweat it. You kind of go, ‘here, here, here, here,’ and let’s go. There are no five-alarm fires. They are all two- and three-alarm and you don’t worry about it as much. I think that’s the biggest thing.”

Bowles will continue to call the defense, primarily because he didn’t get this job until late March and doesn’t want to have to train an assistant. Also, with Brady, the stakes are too high.

Defensive line coach Kacy Rodgers, who has coached with Bowles since 2005 when they were both assistants with the Cowboys, is the co-defensive coordinator along with Larry Foote.

The Bucs’ coaching staff is stuffed full of Bowles’ former teammates, colleagues and closet friends.

Defensive backs coach Kevin Ross had been at Temple for two seasons when Bowles arrived. He started ahead of Bowles until he broke his ankle.

“I probably knew him first out of all of them, and somehow he has the most uncanny way where he can see and have the pulse of a team,” Bowles said. “He’s outstanding at getting to know the guys. What makes them tick, what doesn’t make the tick. When they have a problem, when they don’t have a problem. Telling them the truth and relating everything to me.”

Special teams coach Keith Armstrong stayed in Bowles’ cramped dorm room at Temple when he visited as a high school recruit. He slept on the floor. A year later, Armstrong was the Owls’ running back and didn’t have any money to take his date to IHOP. “He lent me $20,” Armstrong said of Bowles. “He was so quiet. He kept to himself. He’s genuine. Good man. Always was smart. Great teacher. I enjoy being around him.”

Running backs coach Todd McNair arrived at Temple a year after Bowles. “He hasn’t changed a bit,” Bowles said. “He still talks a lot.”

Clyde Christensen was the quarterbacks coach under Arians on that Temple staff. Those were tough days in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood. It was Arians’ first head coaching job. After a loss to Delaware, Arians had his team up at 6 a.m. to run. “We called it Black Sunday,” Bowles said. “Everybody had to get up and start running. I hurt my ankle that day, so I didn’t run the next day. Attitude-wise, I didn’t know if I was going to run anyway.”

When Arians decided to retire from coaching, he not only knew Bowles would become his successor, but he would inherit a full coaching staff.

“The bond we have, it’s kind of evolved over the years,” Bowles said. “From players, students, coaches and we’ve been on the same staff.”

Important influences

While Bowles has played and coached under Arians, one of his biggest influences was Bill Parcells, who brought him to Dallas to coach the secondary in 2005 and later made him the assistant head coach behind Tony Sparano in Miami.

“He’s had more influence on me as far as me seeing the entire game and the organization,” Bowles said of Parcells. “Bill was the first one to ask me what I saw in practice. And I told him about the defensive backs because I’m the defensive backs coach.

“He said, ‘No, what did you see in practice? What did the receivers do? You need to see everything that goes on in practice. You can learn from every coach, good or bad. You need to see when the owners walks in, where the general manager stands, where the scouts stand. Who is looking at what. You need to see the entire game and expand your horizons and you’ll become a better coach. You may not know anything about the offensive line, but look how the offensive line coach teaches. What does he do good? What does he do bad? What can he get better at? What does he learn?’

“And that started me to start looking at the bigger picture and I think that kind of led me to where I am right now.”

From Arians, he learned how to never pull back. From Andy Reid with the Eagles, he learned how to command the room. Phillips taught him how to enjoy the game.

Bowles is a long way from where he began in Elizabeth. His mother, Joan, raised his two brothers and sister by working two jobs, including part-time in the library at the school where he played pickup basketball. First, he had to stop by the library and do his homework. A streetball championship in football once had to wait until Bowles finished washing the windows at home. After you ate, you did your own dishes.

“And you’d better do them right now,” he said.

The discipline helped Bowles as an athlete; he learned to listen. Even today, his friends and assistant coached describe him as quiet.

“He really has always been that way and never talked a lot,” Christensen said. “But when he does, he knows what to say. He’s just a good man, somebody you enjoy working for.”

The biggest thing Bowles will have to overcome, no matter how much success he may have this season, is that he is the beneficiary of having the GOAT at quarterback.

But that didn’t seem to diminish the Super Bowls Brady won for Belichick or Arians.

“He’s a great leader, he’s a great teacher,” Arians said of Bowles. “He has plenty of respect in the building and among the players. I don’t know why he shouldn’t be successful.”

And know this: With the wit and wisdom of Bowles, the Bucs could go a long way.

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