Tonight’s Thursday contest pits a pair of NFC South Division foes when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the Atlanta Falcons. This is a division the Buccaneers have won four straight seasons, and it seems each year they have a new closest competitor.
In 2024, the Bucs ended the season with a two-game bulge over tonight’s opponent, the prior season they won the division by a tiebreaker when both Tampa Bay and the New Orleans Saints won nine games. In 2022, tonight’s home team edged the Carolina Panthers by a game when no team in the division had a winning record. The Bucs had a great season in 2021 when Tom Brady played his second of three seasons in Florida and led Tampa Bay to 13 wins but lost to the Los Angeles Rams in the playoffs.
In Brady’s first season in Florida, he led the Bucs to a Super Bowl win to complete the 2020 season. That was Brady’s seventh Super Bowl triumph, more than any franchise has won.
Brady’s not running the Bucs offense now, but a player with respect throughout the league is, quarterback Baker Mayfield. The one time first overall pick in the draft, by the Cleveland Browns in 2018, the Bucs quarterback led his team to a road win over the Falcons to open this season. This season the Bucs have had a share of first place in their division the entire campaign, winning their first three games, and after a loss to the defending Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles, pinned the talented Seattle Seahawks with a defeat on the losers home field.
Despite that strong start, the Buccaneers come into play tonight having lost four of their prior five games with only a win over the Arizona Cardinals interrupting a winless November. Last Sunday, at home, they were upset by the New Orleans Saints.
So, laying points with a struggling Buccaneers squad appears high risk.
Want higher risk, bet on the Falcons.
Atlanta has too much talent to own a losing mark … and at some point, the coach, Raheem Morris, is going to have to be held responsible and the organization is going to have to turn this talent over to a more capable leader. The Falcons have won only one game since mid-October, while enduring seven losses. In recent weeks, the downturn in Falcons fortunes can be pinned on the season ending injury suffered by starting quarterback Michael Penix four weeks ago during a loss to the Panthers.
His replacement, Kirk Cousins, has been mostly horrible in relief.
Still, the Falcons have talent on both sides of the ball, enough to surprise a struggling Buccaneers team but offer no reason to be confident they can win … or even stay within the five-point spread.
The National Football League completed their bye weeks last Sunday, so we have 16 games to work with this week and a lot better prospects for a confident wager beginning on Sunday.