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By Andrew McCarty
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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers held a 28-14 lead over the Atlanta Falcons in the fourth quarter of Thursday night's game and looked well on their way to an 8-6 record.
Instead, the Buccaneers suffered one of the most embarrassing losses of the season as the Tampa Bay offense faltered while allowing Kirk Cousins and the Falcons to mount a 15-point comeback and a 29-28 victory. After the game head coach Todd Bowles went on an expletive-ridden rant that caught the attention of the masses.
"You don't make excuses," Bowles said in an expletive-laden reaction. "You got to [expletive] care enough where the [expletive] hurts. It's got to [expletive] mean something to you. It's more than a job. It's your [expletive] livelihood. How well do you know your job? How well can you do your job? You can't sugarcoat that [expletive]."
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But that was just the beginning of his postgame tirade.
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Later in the press conference Bowles, a coach with one playoff win in his eight seasons as a head coach, lit into his players and placed the blame for Thursday night's loss squarely on their shoulders.
"At this point you've seen everything in the season," Bowles said. "The coaches have done everything they can do. This is a player-driven team in the last four or five weeks. You've got to execute, and they've got to 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, you know, we're talking 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."
With the loss, Tampa Bay fell out of the No. 1 spot in the NFC South and outside of a playoff spot as the No. 9 seed in the NFC. Two of the team's final three games come against the Carolina Panthers, who hold the top spot in the division.
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