Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles has long been praised as a defensive mastermind in the NFL, and his defensive scheme could be getting even better in 2025.

Bowles suffered some injuries to his defensive unit last year, which put a damper on their play in 2024, but he was still able to win the NFC South and make it to the playoffs for his fourth year in a row as head coach. His defensive scheme is quite varied and offers a lot of looks, and being an NFL head coach is always about trying to evolve those schemes as the game changes.

Bowles spoke to media at the annual NFL owners meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, and he was asked how he identifies his strengths and weaknesses as a coach. He mentioned that the first thing he did after the season ended was go back and watch tape to see how certain things were coached and how concepts were executed, but in doing so, he had what he called a ‘coaching breakthrough’.

“So from the start of last season, the end of last season until now, I have been working on how we can tweak the defense and make the defense better,” Bowles said. “And what is it, March now? It wasn’t probably until last week where I finally had a breakthrough, because I’ve been racking my brain for months trying to go through a lot of things and talking to every coach, going over everything, seeing how we can get better. What can we tweak? What can we do? What do they see? What do we see?”

Buccaneers fans will like to hear that. Bowles dealt with injuries last year, but team greatly struggled in its passing defense, coming in 30th in the league in opposing pass yards per game (245.3).

Any route to fixing that across multiple position groups will be key for Tampa Bay’s success. And if Bowles is to be believed, he may have found that route while going over 2024 tape as the team readies itself for another campaign.

“It comes with plenty of film study, plenty of doodling on the board, watching things, plenty of what we have and you hold out a little bit to what we may get in the draft, but you got to go through all the scenarios in your head,” Bowles said. “We’ve finally come up with something that we feel like is a successful formula for our defense going forward this year and tweaking a few things and I’m excited about that.”

The Bucs will likely get some new players to plug into the defense after the NFL Draft in April, and once that happens, Bowles will get to test his new “successful formula” at OTAs, rookie minicamp and beyond as 2025 approaches.