Bruce Arians Needs to Clean Up This Issue for Buccaneers

For the first seven weeks of the 2021 NFL season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 6-1 and looked well on their way to another Super Bowl appearance. Unfortunately, the Buccaneers have now lost their last two games and that skid is in danger of growing if head coach Bruce Arians can't fix a certain issue: his team's discipline.

The Buccaneers are currently tied for the sixth-most penalties per game (7.2) while their 69.2 penalty yards per game ranks third-most. In total, Tampa Bay has taken 285 more penalty yards than their opponents — the biggest differential in the NFL.

While it's easy to blame the players for these mistakes, it's clear that Arians needs to take accountability. It's a coach's job to keep his players disciplined and to know that these costly penalties are unacceptable.

The Buccaneers committed six penalties in their Week 10 loss to the Washington Football team, leading to Arians saying, "We're a very dumb football team."

This comment came a few weeks after the coach said Tampa Bay would use the Week 9 bye week to solve the penalty issues, which was, clearly, unsuccessful.

Arians will have another shot to prove that his team can be disciplined when the Buccaneers host the New York Giants for Week 11's Monday Night Football matchup. Tampa Bay is currently FanDuel Sportsbook's 10.5-point favorite heading into the game.

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Devon Platana is not a FanDuel employee. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.