Buccaneers Rest Starters vs. Falcons? Coach Todd Bowles Reveals Plan

Playoff seeding already determined, will the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play or sit their starters in Sunday's season finale against the Atlanta Falcons? Bucs coach Todd Bowles provided an early answer.

The Atlanta Falcons (6-10) are set to host the NFC South-champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers (8-8) in the season finale ... but will the visitors play their starters?

Given a Week 11 bye, the Buccaneers have played six consecutive games entering Sunday and will have their first playoff game the following week, prompting the idea that they could give some of their players a manufactured bye week.

But according to Bucs coach Todd Bowles, that's not going to be the case ... for now.

"No," answered Bowles, when asked if Tampa Bay will rest its regulars. "We can get better at a lot of things, so right now I'm planning on playing them. We'll see as the week goes forward, but we can get better at a lot of things that we need to work on, and we don't need to take our foot off the gas."

Bowles added that he and his staff will make the final decision later in the week, but "right now everybody needs to plan on playing" in Atlanta. Tampa Bay's first-year coach believes playing can help work out some last-minute kinks and winning would aid team morale entering the playoffs.

But most importantly, it's a philosophical standpoint from Bowles that "injuries are going to happen" in the sport, noting that players "probably don't need to be playing" if they're concerned about getting hurt.

Thus, while nothing is official, Bowles certainly seems to feel strongly about his team not resting anybody, from quarterback Tom Brady on down.

"I mean, it's football," Bowles began. "You can't play 16 games and then worry about the 17th. You can't play three preseason games and 16 games and practice every day and say you may get hurt in the 17th game. You can get hurt the first week, you can get hurt in training camp. If you worry about that, you're probably going to get hurt anyway. 

"We signed up to play football and coach football, that's what we're going to do. Everybody that loves football, that loves to play, will play the game."

While Bowles was passionate about the playing part, he was much more on board with the idea of pulling his starters early but remained noncommittal.

"It's possible," Bowles said. "Like I said, it's early in the week. We haven't made any decisions yet. We haven't met on it, we haven't talked about it, everything is on the table. We'll talk about it, and we'll move forward from there."

The Falcons, already eliminated from playoff contention, are playing more for pride than any other stakes, while the Buccaneers have already secured the No. 4 seed in the NFC. Thus, neither team desperately needs to win - but certainly still wants to finish the season strong.

Once viewed as a potential division-deciding game, Sunday's affair is far from that ... but still seems like it could feature all the regulars on each side.

Atlanta and Tampa Bay will kick off at 1 p.m. Sunday inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

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You can follow Daniel Flick on Twitter @DFlickDraft

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