Buccaneers’ Todd Bowles jokes he and Payne Durham are ‘secret lovers’

After spotting Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Payne Durham with his arm wrapped around Todd Bowles while walking off the field following the team’s walk-off win vs. the New York Jets on Sunday, Jenna Laine sought to learn more about the interaction. And while he evaded providing any actual information, the Bucs’ head coach certainly left the ESPN reporter with a memorable answer.

“Me and Payne have a relationship not many people know about,” Bowles responded when asked by Laine what the backup tight end had said to him. “We’re secret lovers.”

And that was that.

No ensuing laughter or follow-up response. Bowles merely deadpanned that he and one of his players were having an affair and carried on with his press conference as if he had just answered a boiler plate question about his team’s resiliency or Baker Mayfield’s command of the Tampa Bay huddle.

The answer was so absurd that many on social media quickly speculated that it had been created by AI (it wasn’t). Meanwhile, others shared their belief that the 61-year-old head coach was trolling Laine or effectively telling her to mind her business.

Taking to X, Laine posted side-by-side videos of the interaction between Bowles and Durham she was asking about and the head coach’s response. And if the answer was intended to be a slight to the reporter, she certainly didn’t take it that way, referring to the response as “wild” along with a series of crying laughing emojis.

At this point, there isn’t any reason to think that Bowles was actually trolling Laine — it’s more likely he was merely giving a sarcastic response in lieu of providing actual insight. Still, that doesn’t make the response any less bizarre, especially considering the manner in which he merely moved forward with the rest of his press conference.