History Suggests A Dominant NFC South Winner This Fall
June 11th, 2023
Race to 10.
If you want a break from wringing your hands over Tristan Wirfs moving to left tackle, fretting how the Bucs can win with Kyler Traskfield or wearing out your rosary hoping Joe Tryon-Shoyinka can get to 10 sacks, here is some happy food for thought.
Recent history suggests the year after a team wins a division with a losing record, the division winner is a damn good team.
Scott Smith of Buccaneers.com researched division winners with losing records. In non-strike seasons, there have been four: Seattle, Carolina, Washington and Tampa Bay.
In 2011, the year after Seattle won the NFC West with a 7-9 record, San Francisco won the division with a 13-3 mark.
In 2015, the year after Carolina won the NFC South division with a 7-8-1 mark, the Stinking Panthers dominated the league with a 15-1 record and advanced to the Super Bowl.
In 2021, the year after the WTF won the NFC East with a 7-9 mark, Dallas racked up a 12-5 record to win the division.
So if history repeats itself, per Smith, the next NFC South champion will have at least 10 wins and probably 12 or more. So that’s likely a Bucs goal: win at least 10 games.
As former Bucs head coach Raheem Morris once said, it’s a “Race to 10.”
Can the Bucs be that team?
June 11th, 2023 at 4:37 am
Scott has too much time on his hands me thinks. LOL
June 11th, 2023 at 6:41 am
Could very well be us. This team, top to bottom, has more proven talent on it than our 7-9 2019 squad had going into the season. Our biggest question mark this year is the same as that year, QB. And we all know how Winston chucked 30 INTs. If we can get average QB play this year we win 10+ games.
June 11th, 2023 at 7:19 am
haha garro^^^ me agree
June 11th, 2023 at 7:44 am
“garro Says: Scott has too much time on his hands me thinks.”
You misspelled Joe.
June 11th, 2023 at 7:49 am
Well according to the experts the Bucs won’t be that team. I think we can win 10 games, I’m not an expert.
June 11th, 2023 at 8:12 am
If you want a break from wringing your hands over Tristan Wirfs moving to left tackle,
_____________
By all means, those 4 people deserve a break from that perceived horror.
😂
June 11th, 2023 at 8:37 am
Seeing is believing!! I hope that Todd Bowles doesn’t screw this season up like last year!! If he does… Dave Canales could very well be waiting in the wing! At this level positivity can mean the difference between winning and losing! Anyone who listens to Bowles knows he’s anything but positive! Then there’s DC!!!! Seeing is believing!!!
June 11th, 2023 at 8:43 am
Aside from Bucs, Carolina has the ability to jump ahead
June 11th, 2023 at 8:54 am
Looking at the Bucs schedule our three toughest games are the Eagles at home and the 49ers and Bills on the road.
The rest of the games are against pretty weak teams:
– Vikings
– Bears
– Packers
– Colts
– Texans
– Titans
– Lions
– Jags
– NFC South teams x2
These are all winnable games even if the Bucs are mediocre this season…
June 11th, 2023 at 9:11 am
In “non strike” seasons??? WTF is he babbling about???
There was some kind of lockout in 1968, but I was 8 years old and didn’t care about sports yet. There was some kind of strike in 1974, but I don’t remember it effecting the season that much. 1982 was bad and that one cost several games and had scab teams pretending to be NFL players for three games. Did this Scott Smith really subtract those three years from his data pool or did he just throw that scrap in there to make his gibberish sound like research?
June 11th, 2023 at 10:42 am
10? Heck with HC/DC Bowles and Mayfield we should be undefeated and win the Super Bowl.
June 11th, 2023 at 10:58 am
None of the losing record division winners were the team to win the division in dominating fashion the following year.
June 11th, 2023 at 11:57 am
The Panthers followed up a weak division title year with a trip to the Super Bowl, but they had an MVP qb.
June 11th, 2023 at 12:43 pm
Marine Buc it won’t matter. Baker Mayfield only throws for 170 YPG. We have no chance. We might struggle to win a single game.
June 11th, 2023 at 2:07 pm
F*** what the experts think because when the bucs played the Chiefs in the super bowl not one pick the bucs. Not even Big Joe. Sorry, but Joe absolutely picked the Bucs to win on their home turf with the greatest winner in NFL history.–Joe After the super bowl not one admitted they were wrong. The bucs have a great defense and they have a great office and coordinator that can finally use the talent he has they’re going to surprise a lot of teams this year and take it from me and I’m no expert
June 11th, 2023 at 2:47 pm
@ Just Leave Trask alone
I hear what your saying but if Baker Mayfield can repeat what he did in 2020 then the Bucs are going to win 8-10 games.
If the Bucs don’t have any major injury issues and our offense can score more than 17 points a game we will have a better team than last season.