Bucs are about to fall back into a spot they don’t want to be in if they don’t fix their mistakes
The Bucs are on the verge of experiencing yet another regular season slump.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are coming off a frustrating loss to the New England Patriots and now they have to turn around and take on Josh Allen and the 6-3 Buffalo Bills.
The Bucs will travel up to Buffalo in hopes of avoiding back-to-back losses for the first time this season. That’s not the only thing the Bucs are trying to steer clear of – they’re also trying to avoid a third-straight multi-game losing streak under Todd Bowles.
Tampa Bay may have won its division in each of the last four seasons, but it’s come with yearly struggles outside of the 2021 season when the team went 13-4 and tied the Green Bay Packers for the league’s best record.
Since 2022, the Bucs have endured at least a three-game losing streak at some point. The Bucs lost three in a row from Weeks 6-8 in 2022, four in a row that eventually grew into six of seven games lost in 2023, and then the four consecutive losses from Weeks 7-10 in 2024.
The key with all of the trends is the fact each one put the Bucs behind the eight ball in the playoff race. It forced the Bucs to amass winning streaks with their backs against the wall and while they pulled it off – that’s not something you want to go through on a yearly basis.
And this year, they are way too injured to force their own backs against the wall, but it could very well happen. After this week, it’s another road trip to take on a red-hot Los Angeles Rams team that could be the NFC’s No. 1 seed by the time Week 12 rolls around. After that, it’s the Arizona Cardinals and then four of the Bucs’ last five games are division opponents. The Miami Dolphins, who just beat the Bills, are also on the calendar.
The Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons games are no “gimmes”, either. If the Bucs roll into Week 13 with a 6-5 record then it’s totally logical to develop a sense of worry for how everything else will play out. The Bucs are struggling on offense and the defense is giving up way too many big plays and right now, there doesn’t seem to be a solution for the situations.
It’s more than fair to question why this happens every single year. It seems unavoidable, at this point, and this year’s slew of injuries makes it even harder to pinpoint the problems than in years’ past. Either way, the common denominator in all of it is Bowles, whether that’s fair to point out or not. Baker Mayfield is next in line – the only thing saving his name from being mentioned in the same breath is because he wasn’t with the Bucs in 2022. At the same time, his play regresses during these losing streaks and that’s certainly been the case with him since the Week 7 matchup against the Detroit Lions.
The Bucs have to win this week, plain and simple. Even if it’s an AFC matchup, they don’t want to have to go to LA with on a two-game losing streak that could extend to even worse as the season progresses.
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