Dirk Koetter Calls For His Own Firing After Bears Humiliate Bucs

Thanks to the atrocious defense of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Mitch Trubisky looked like the savior of Chicago in the Bears’ 48-10 win this afternoon. Going for 354 yards passing, 53 yards rushing, and six touchdowns, Trubisky absolutely torched the now 2-2 Bucs, helping put a definitive end to Tampa’s FitzMagic as their formerly heroic back-up was benched for Jameis Winston at halftime.

But neither Winston nor Ryan Fitzpatrick mattered today. If someone watching this game didn’t know any better, they would come away believing that Mitch Trubisky was the best quarterback alive:

The season is still young, but the Buccaneers look like garbage. The quarterback who delivered them some initial optimism very suddenly looks mediocre again, and Trubisky—who’s been awkward and unproven so far in his young career—completely tore their defense to shreds. Naturally, head coach Dirk Koetter, who’s been with the Bucs since the beginning of 2016 and narrowly avoided getting fired after a disappointing 2017 season, had to answer some tough questions after the game. Surprisingly, however, he took about as much responsibility as he could.

“We were horrific in all aspects of football today, all aspects,” Koetter said. “Based on that game today, we couldn’t make enough changes. We should fire every person that was on that field today, starting with me. That was horrific.”

That quote came in response to a question about whether or not his defensive coordinator, Mike Smith, should be fired, so there’s an element of Koetter sticking up for his assistant here. But, I mean ... he’s not wrong! If it weren’t for the random god-level play of a journeyman veteran in the first two games of the season, the Buccaneers would very likely be 0-4 and on pace for an even worse year than their 5-11 season last year. On paper, with a 2-2 record, maybe it seems too rash to pull the plug on the Koetter era in Tampa Bay—they’ll have a bye week to recuperate, at least. But if the Bucs’ play continues to be so horrific that, like, the Falcons drop 70 points on them in Week 6 and then Baker Mayfield pulls a Trubisky and reduces them to rubble in Week 7, Tampa shouldn’t hesitate to hit the reset button.