Bucs’ Todd Bowles optimistic about 2023 season despite missing ‘aura’ of Tom Brady

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will have a fresh start in 2023.

The team saw Tom Brady retire from the NFL after three seasons and a Super Bowl with the Buccaneers and will start anew with Baker Mayfield or Kyle Trask ripping passes. The team also brought in running back Chase Edmonds and linebacker Greg Gaines so far this offseason.

Bucs coach Todd Bowles remained optimistic about Tampa Bay’s chances.

“When you replace a player of that magnitude, first of all, you don’t replace him,” he told NFL.com ahead of the league’s annual meeting in Arizona on Sunday. “You lose aura. You lose the expectation of being great. That doesn’t mean you can’t be great. You just have to do it more as a team.

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“We did it as a team when he was there, but he was such a great player and a great person that you focus all on that. And now that that is gone, the perception is that everything else is gone when really it isn’t.

“We have a lot of good players on our team on both sides of the ball. We have some pieces to fill, but we have a lot of good football players on our team. And we just have to understand that and not go with the so-called outside narrative and do what we have to do to win ball games.”

Tampa Bay won the NFC South with an 8-9 record in 2022. Brady and the team did not do their best but still managed to get to the playoffs. The Bucs lost to the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC wild-card playoffs.

The Buccaneers traded Shaq Mason to the Houston Texans and lost Rakeem Nunez-Roches to the New York Giants, Sean Murphy-Bunting to the Tennessee Titans and Mike Edwards to the Kansas City Chiefs.