The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have finally reached their bye week, and thank God for that. They need all the time in the world to get somewhat close to being healthy. With that said, it doesn’t necessarily mean this will be a stress free week.
The Bucs have the ability to go on a run and while that would help them tremendously in terms of making the playoffs, they need a little bit of help from the other teams. So, I will be going over who needs to win or lose to best help the Buccaneers.
To start with the obvious, The Falcons losing to the Broncos would tremendously help the Bucs win the division. I do think the Broncos have a really good shot of beating the Falcons. While they are far from the best team, they are solidly good and usually beat up on the mid to bad teams. The Falcons are probably better than mid, but they ruled out eight players before today, so right now they probably are. Using the NY Times playoff predictor, the Bucs chances go from 11% chance in a Falcons win to 17% in a Broncos win. It is the most consequential game in terms of helping the Bucs.
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The other teams that need to lose are the following: the Packers, Titans, Patriots, and Seahawks. Now, realistically speaking, there just is not a good chance of any of these really happening. Seahawks can beat the 49ers as the 49ers have been more or less drifting through the season. However, the Hawks are so damn streaky that it makes it hard to trust them.
And maybe if I squint really hard and let my UNC bias really consume me, I can see the Patriots beat the Rams. The Patriots are not a good football team right now. But, the Rams have also been pretty mid. And with Drake Maye starting, he is elevating the team a lot more than most people probably expected. He is actually playing pretty solid ball, albeit he has faced the Titans and Bears (to give him credit though Chicago’s defense is 7th in points and 13th in yards, so it isn’t bad).
Outside that though, I just don’t see these other ones having a realistic shot. Da Bears are engaging in a competition with the White Sox on which the Chicago sports team can be more embarrassing (you can sit this one out Blackhawks and Bulls) and also whose owner is worse at running a team. On top of the Packers just owning them, I have very little faith in this upset. The Titans might have a slightly better chance than the Bears, but it’s not great. They’re also a mess right now, but if the Sam Darnold that played the Jags shows up today, then that’s their only real shot.
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If by some miracle all of these games go the Buccaneers way, then their playoff chances go to 21%, up from 15%. But like I also said, the chances of every single one of these games going the Bucs way are slim. The Eagles winning did actually help them as well, even if I hated watching them win. At the end of the day, the Bucs need to hold up their end of the bargain and start winning football games again. This is all meaningless if they don’t beat teams after the bye.
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