The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had about as ugly a loss as a playoff contender can have in the Week 15 game against the Atlanta Falcons.
With Tampa Bay desperately needing a win, the Buccaneers coughed up one against Atlanta, blowing a two-score fourth-quarter lead that resulted in them falling into second place in the NFC South and out of a playoff spot.
The normally reserved Bowles went nuclear in his post-game presser, dropping a total of seven F-bombs while answering a question about what he would say to players in the locker room following the brutal loss.
"It's inexcusable. You don't make excuses," Bowles said. "You gotta f****** care enough where this s*** hurts. You gotta f****** care enough where this s*** hurts. Gotta f****** mean something to you. It's more than a job, it's your f****** livelihood."
"How well do you know your job, how well can you do your job. You can't sugarcoat that s***," he added. "It was in-f******-excusable. There's no f****** answer for it. No excuse for it. That's what you tell them in the locker room. Look in the f****** mirror."
Bowles didn't stop there, though.
He even went on to put all of the blame on his players instead of putting any on himself and the coaching staff.
"At this point, you've seen everything in the season," he said. "The coaches have done everything they can do. This is a player-drive team in the last four or five weeks. You gotta execute and they gotta 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, now, we're only 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, so we gotta get up and go to work tomorrow, no matter how bad today looks. You gotta put it behind you and we gotta win the last three games, we know that."
Bowles' players might be so disgusted at themselves that they have no issue with what he said, but this is exactly the type of comment that can lose a locker room.
We might be more inclined to put extra blame on the players if what the Bucs are going through hasn't happened under Bowles before, but it has.
As a result, it's fair to wonder if players deserve all of the blame rather than some of it going to the coaching staff and, more specifically, Bowles himself.
At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. The fact is, the Bucs are crashing and burning right before our very eyes and no longer control their own destiny going into the weekend.
More NFL News
- Jake Ferguson injury update spells trouble for TE's Week 15 status
- CeeDee Lamb injury update all but confirms WR's Week 15 status
- Philip Rivers' Week 15 playing status gets significant update
- Josh Jacobs injury update sets off alarm bells for Week 15
- De'Von Achane injury update is only mildly concerning
- Ex-Cowboys, Packers coach considered front-runner for Titans job