DETROIT, MICHIGAN – JANUARY 21: Head coach Todd Bowles of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers speaks with head coach Dan Campbell of the Detroit Lions following the NFC Divisional Playoff game at Ford Field on January 21, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images)
The Buccaneers failed to use their final timeout in Detroit on Sunday in a playoff loss to the Lions and some people were pissed about it.

One guy decided to do a deep dive as to why that timeout wasn’t called and it had to do with the history between the head coaches.

While Dan Campbell was a player on the Dallas Cowboys, Todd Bowles was a coach on the staff. In the 2010s, both were coaching together on the Miami Dolphins.

When Detroit’s Derrick Barnes picked off Baker Mayfield with 1:33 left to play, the game appeared to be over, but the Buccaneers caught a break because the Lions weren’t using the entire play clock before taking a knee on their final three plays.

Bowles could have called a timeout, which would have made the Lions run a play on fourth-and-13 from Tampa Bay’s 31-yard line, but he decided to take the timeout home with him.

After the Buccaneers’ 31-23 divisional-round loss to the Detroit Lions, Tampa Bay coach Todd Bowles said his team not using its final timeout in the Bucs’ 31-23 divisional round playoff loss to the Detroit Lions was not a matter of coaching etiquette.
“They already had a field goal lined up and it would’ve been about 12 seconds left on the clock to end the ball game, we weren’t going to come back from that,” Bowles told the media. “No sense in prolonging the obvious.”

That is quite a bizarre explanation.

There was a 40% chance that the Buccaneers would have gotten the ball back and the team could’ve done something insane in the final seconds to give themselves a shot at securing a touchdown and then going for two.

Bowles was asked about the timeout situation again on Monday and he doubled down on his answer.
“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 media. “It’s kind of pointless. You kind of know when the game is over and the game was over.”
The fact that the Lions didn’t use the entire play clock on their kneel-downs was crazy, but Bowles not giving his team one last shot was even worse.