Buccaneers
Buccaneers HC Todd Bowles told his team to “look in the mirror” after blowing a two-touchdown lead and losing to the Falcons by one point.
“You don’t make excuses,” Bowles said, via ESPN. “You got to f—ing care enough where the s— hurts. It’s got to f—ing mean something to you. It’s more than a job. It’s your f—ing livelihood. How well do you know your job? How well can you do your job? You can’t sugarcoat that s—. At this point, you’ve seen everything in the season. The coaches have done everything they can do. This is a player-driven team in the last four or five weeks. You’ve got to execute, and they’ve got to hold each other accountable. As a coach, you can sit there until you’re blue in the face. Until they start holding each other accountable and doing the little things right — and that’s not everybody, you know, we’re talking about a small, select few. But the small, select few is what’s getting us beat. And until that happens, it’s not going to get right.”
“This one is going to haunt me. It falls on my shoulders,” QB Baker Mayfield said. “It’s not the defense’s fault. It’s my fault.”
- CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz reports Cal is hiring Buccaneers pass game specialist/assistant QB coach Jordan Somerville as their offensive coordinator.
Panthers
The Panthers lost a brutal game in Week 15 to the Saints, where they squandered a golden opportunity to set up a clinching scenario in Week 16 against Tampa Bay. Carolina DT Derrick Brown is staying positive after a tough loss because they control their own destiny.
“It’s great to still have everything in front of us, right? Like you’ve got to put this s–t behind us and get back to work,” Brown said, via the team’s website. “You can’t sit here and suck on this because you’ve got to go back to work and get ready for tomorrow and get ready to play Tampa Bay next weekend. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for us. I mean, we’ve got to go out here and we got to get it now. I mean, it is what it is. It’s been that way since Day 1, right? We started off 1-3, and you know it’s the same mentality, right? Nothing has come easy for us this season. So I mean now we’ve got to go back and go to work.”
- Panthers HC Dave Canales said DT Tershawn Wharton tripped on a teammate during Saturday’s walkthrough and injured his hamstring. (Joe Person)
Saints
Saints second-round QB Tyler Shough led multiple big drives to come back and beat the Panthers in Week 15. New Orleans HC Kellen Moore praised the rookie for his composure in making the big plays when the team needed them the most.
“Just his steadiness,” Moore said, via Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk. “His steadiness is really special. I think it’s really important when you play quarterback in this league. There are a lot of hard downs. You’re not going to convert every single one of them. Your ability to go from one to the next and take advantage of the opportunity presented, again, he made some big-time plays.”
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