Todd Bowles Says He Might Let Larry Foote Call Plays In Buccaneers’ Preseason Game Against Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers are hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a preseason game on August 16, and a name that’s quite familiar to Steelers’ fans may be Tampa’s primary play-caller. On The Pewter Report podcast, Buccaneers’ head coach Todd Bowles said outside linebackers coach and run game coordinator Larry Foote may get the chance to call plays against the Steelers, the team he spent 11 years with during his playing career.

“I’m pretty sure I won’t call them all three, we haven’t gotten into it yet. We kinda figure those out in the summertime. Larry’s going back to Pittsburgh, and I know that’s kind of a soft spot for him, so he may get to do that one; we’ll see as it goes on. I just gotta get him on the plane to get him back home.”

Foote was a fourth-round pick by the Steelers in the 2002 NFL Draft, played his first seven years with the Steelers, left to play for the Detroit Lions in 2009, and came back and spent four more years with the Steelers before finishing out his career with the Arizona Cardinals. He won two Super Bowls as a member of the Steelers while finishing his Pittsburgh career with 636 tackles, 21 sacks, three interceptions, and nine forced fumbles.

Larry Foote has risen his way up the coaching ranks since becoming the Cardinals’ assistant linebackers coach in 2015, and he’s worked under Bowles in Tampa since 2019. From 2022-2024, Foote, who started his stint with Tampa Bay as the outside linebackers coach, worked with inside linebackers, but the Buccaneers moved him back outside this offseason.

Ahead of Pittsburgh’s matchup with the Buccaneers in 2022, Foote said that he owed a lot to the Steelers’ culture and that he felt he was “raised right” upon coming into the league. It would be a cool opportunity for him to get a chance to call plays against the organization that helped make him a professional and where he began his NFL career.

In recent years, coaches across the league, including Bowles, have let up-and-coming assistants get a chance to call plays during the preseason in order to give them that experience. For assistant coaches who have a chance at becoming coordinators or head coaches, the experience is invaluable in giving them a feel for doing something they may not have previously had the opportunity to do. It would be awesome for Larry Foote if he were able to get that experience against the team he spent most of his career with.