Tampa Bay, for the better part of NFL history, has been one of the lower notes in the NFL. They play in the NFC South, a division with low winning percentages. The highest regular-season win-loss percentage in the division belongs to the New Orleans Saints, at .463.
Each team in this division is notorious for its longstanding or varied poor performances. The Atlanta Falcons infamously lost a Super Bowl to the New England Patriots despite a 28-point lead in the fourth quarter. The Panthers have made NFL history—becoming the first team to win their division twice with a losing record (7-8-1 in 2014 and 8-9 in 2025). The Saints did not have a winning season from 1967 to 1986, and they have had eight starting quarterbacks since Drew Brees retired in March of 2021, not including rookie quarterback Tyler Shough.
How do the Buccaneers fit into this quadrant? As of the end of the 2025 regular season, they have the worst win-loss percentage (.412).
Things took a turn for them, though, when famous quarterback Tom Brady joined the Buccaneers and led them to the 2021 Super Bowl title. Since then, the team has been considered the best in the NFC South, with little divisional competition.
To bring it back to the present, the NFC South participated in a weird statistical event, in which every team in the division finished the season with a negative point differential, meaning they gave up more points than they scored.
In Week 7 of the season, the Buccaneers were 5-1 and atop the NFL’s power rankings. Positioned to dominate and win the division. However, at the end of the season, they were 8-9 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2019, all because they lost the three-way tiebreaker to the Panthers.
Let’s start at the beginning of the season – they became the first team to win four games with game-winning scores in the final minute, 5-0 in games decided by 3 points or fewer by Week 13. Because of the fourth-quarter surges, Baker Mayfield was being called a legitimate MVP candidate by midseason.
But magic vanishes—that performance has rarely, if ever, held up for a season in professional sports. They suddenly started losing those games by the same margins—three games in a row dropped by one and three points (twice) respectively.
In the critical Week 15 game against the Falcons, Mayfield threw a late interception and outright missed a deep pass that would’ve iced the game, later admitting that the clutch plays had dried up. The offense had failed to score 13 points in two of their last three games, proving that they couldn’t just clutch out of a bad performance anymore.
Despite Head Coach Tom Bowles being a former safety and praised as a defensive mastermind, the defense suffered a staggering downfall. The Bucs secondary finished the season ranked dead last in passing yards allowed, giving up 257 per game. Since Week 9, the defense allowed 28.4 points per game, bottom 5 in the league.
They started well, though. Over the first three weeks, the defense was third in efficiency but had dropped to 29th by the end of the season.
At the end of the season, their offense was around average (17th to 21st in major categories) while their defense was average except for the passing (27th). When other teams were in the Red Zone, they allowed their opponent to score near 70% of the time, dead last in the league.
In the craze of firings and resignations—Mike Tomlin of the Steelers, John Harbaugh of the Ravens and (now Giants), Kevin Stefanski of the Browns (now Falcons), Kevin Patullo of the Eagles, Sean McDermott of the Bills—Bowles remains, much to the surprise of Tampa fans.
Bowles fired their offensive coordinator, Josh Grizzard, their fourth in four years, as part of the coaching staff overhaul. But with a negative point differential staring them in the face, major changes may be needed. But as we enter the conference championships, things may stay like this for a while. Given the best era the team has experienced, they may not want to fire the coach with the fourth-most combined playoff and regular-season wins in franchise history.
They now enter a turning point, one that can dictate the future of their franchise. Their next priority is to re-sign wide receiver Mike Evans, the franchise’s leading scorer, whose contract expires on the last day of the 2025 league year (March of this year). With that looming deadline, the Bucs have a choice to make: to pivot or continue and try to work up this era of football.