For Tampa Bay Bucs coach Lovie Smith, the seat is getting hotter.
At least, according to USA Today, it is.
Smith took the biggest jump of any coach in the newspaper’s hot-seat rankings this week, jumping from seventh to third in the rankings. He trails only the Colts’ Chuck Pagano and the Lions’ Jim Caldwell (a former Bucs’ assistant) in the rankings.
Smith is ranked 10th at coacheshotseat.com.
Smith seemed to admit Monday that he didn’t have a very good game himself against Washington. Of all the Smith critics in Tampa Bay, well, he’s one of them.
For instance:
There was Washington’s recovery of an onside kick. We didn’t line up properly on that play,” Smith said. “I’ll just go on that. [We] didn’t execute the way [we wanted]. It starts with us first, as coaches. We didn’t have the guys lined up in the right position on that play. It’s kind of as simple as that.”
There was the winning touchdown pass by Washington. “Bad on our part,” Smith said. “Starting with the coaches, then to the players. The onside kick, same thing. Bad on our part as coaches, then how we executed it.”
There was the offensive series where the Bucs couldn’t close out the game with a touchdown on three straight runs. “The ball should go a different place for [that play],” Smith said. “We didn’t handle the situation. It wasn’t on Jameis or anything like that. It starts with us as coaches. We didn’t put the guys in the best position to be successful in that situation. That’s about all I can say. It’s on us; we didn’t put the guys in the best position there.”
There were the 16 penalties. “Sixteen for 142 yards, it can’t be that,” Smith said. “We’ll keep working on it, just like we’ll keep working on everything else.”
