Buccaneers Rachaad White Talks Issues With Josh Grizzard

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a rough second half of the 2025 NFL season. The season ended with the team losing seven of their last nine games and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2019. They finished with an 8-9 record. And despite winning their last game against the Panthers, they were eliminated due to a three-way tiebreaker with the Falcons and Panthers.

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The Bucs’ struggles go way deeper than just one area. When you’re dropping that many games, everyone’s got to take a hit. Todd Bowles’ D was a mess, getting torched regularly with huge plays down the stretch. And don’t even get us started on special teams – it was a disaster. They were so bad Bowles had to nix returns late in the season.

The Bucs’ offense struggled mightily down the stretch, failing to live up to expectations even when the offense got healthy. This led to Josh Grizzard getting canned after just one year as OC, marking the fourth time in four years the Bucs have gone through an offensive coordinator. They’re now scrambling to find someone to breathe life back into the offense.

Some critics viewed Bowles’ decision to fire five assistants as a deflection of responsibility. Grizzard’s game plan was indeed questionable, particularly in the latter stages of the season. The Bucs’ offense experienced significant struggles, prompting scrutiny of Grizzard’s play-calling decisions.

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Pending Free Agent Running Back Rachaad White is echoing the concerns of Bucs fans everywhere. In a recent interview on the “Loose Cannons” podcast, White emphasized that the team should’ve been feeding the ball to their playmakers in more straightforward situations, suggesting the offense overcomplicated things.

“I think we were trying to get everybody the ball or in the right manner or in the right way,” White stated. “Do this and do that. I just don’t think it went as planned. We had some tough injuries for sure that go down that o line, but I would say guys that stepped in, to me — and I’m not being biased, I’m just being real — I think they held their own a good amount of the time.”

White acknowledged the injury issues, but also pointed out that Grizzard’s offense was unnecessarily complex. He suggested simplification could’ve helped the Bucs capitalize on opportunities.

White brought up a conversation with Bucky Irving about a key missing element in the Bucs’ offense. And that was, simple, easy pitches and catches for playmakers like himself. He noted this was a staple of former OC Dave Canales’ approach that helped the team succeed in the past.

“I think probably just try to make things more complicated than what it is and what it was, I think, is kind of what I would say. I think some of the guys we got, too. You could just get the ball in their hands and let them out in space, and just let them create and let them get in a flow and rhythm and things like that.”

White continued,

“I was talking to Bucky (Irving) about it. I was telling him about, he was asking me, and I was like, when I played with (Dave) Canales two years ago, sometimes you would just start the game off with a wide pass, like a screen-type pass. And he’d just get you the ball, and make some shake sometimes, or sometimes you probably don’t, but just get like an easy — you know how they say. Just like a pitch and catch. For [Baker Mayfield], too. Like, not even just for the running backs, but just for Bake. Like, sometimes it’s just getting some easy — you know what I’m saying — completions and stuff like that.”

It’s tough to argue with White’s assessment. Baker Mayfield struggled to find his groove. To compound that, the Bucs’ running backs were underutilized in the passing game. This is where guys like Irving and White could’ve made a bigger impact.