Padded Home Stretch
May 21st, 2025
Win early.
If they can do it twice in the past two years, they can do it a third time.
Back in 2023, the Bucs, sitting at 4-7 entering December, had to win five of their last six games to win the NFC South.
Last year, the Bucs nearly dug themselves a hole too big to climb out of (4-6) and won six of their last seven games to win the NFC South.
Nick Shook is banking on the something similar for a third-straight year. Shook looks at the final weeks of the season and believes, if they need to, the Bucs ought to be able to navigate them quite nicely.
The Buccaneers, who won six of their final seven regular-season games in 2024, end the 2025 campaign with six consecutive games against teams that missed the playoffs.
Well, that helps that the Bucs have quasi-cupcakes on the late-season schedule just in case they need to make another desperate march. But the way to avoid these win-to-survive fires is to beat the hell out of teams in the first three months of the season. No let-ups. No losing streaks.
If the Bucs have a strong first half, maybe they won’t need to play high-wire-act games in December and January.
May 21st, 2025 at 12:16 am
I bet we go undefeated I’m division this year
May 21st, 2025 at 12:16 am
If Reddick can get to the quarterback and YaYa can turn the pressures into sacks we will win 14 games. With our offense humming and a great defense we might go undefeated!!
May 21st, 2025 at 12:17 am
In*
May 21st, 2025 at 12:18 am
I really don’t see the Panthers as cupcakes this year. Played Bucs Chiefs Eagles to one score games last year. See how their D FA signings pan out but if they do, Panthers are gonna challenge us as much as the Falcons I think.
Especially after we whap ATL week 1.
May 21st, 2025 at 12:21 am
Hopefully, you are preaching to the choir.
May 21st, 2025 at 12:50 am
Excuses for Bowles starting early this season.
Always a good idea to hedge your bets with his defense.
The season is hanging under that sword.
May 21st, 2025 at 1:03 am
Keys to Success:
1. Strong running attack.
2. CK and AWJ health.
This team wins with complimentary football. The run game made the offense so much easier. Need our playmakers back and healthy on defense.
May 21st, 2025 at 2:16 am
How bout lets not dig that hole at all Joe and just win the games we should win and maybe a few we shouldn’t.
Go Bucs!
May 21st, 2025 at 4:33 am
NFL has tried hard to seek parity, especially via the salary CAP, and has done a remarkably good job along those lines it seems. Still, each year stands on its’ own merit IMO. Every year we make improvements, but so do our opponents.
This year’s Bucs’ schedule has been analyzed a bunch already, with more to come. Some look at it in relation to the starting schedule, some by the BYE week’s location, and some by the strength of the ending weeks’ schedule. Hard to draw any real conclusions in May though, since we don’t know how our own team will evolve, much less how each of our opponents will.
This year’s BYE week comes after 8 games; a fairly decent location in the schedule. We only have 1 Thursday night game, against the Falcons, but it’s here at RayJay 4 days after our Sunday 1 PM game HERE against the Saints. I don’t like Thursday night games, but I’d say THAT is more to our advantage than to the Falcons. We also have 2 Monday night games, BOTH away (those can be rough). Other than that, the schedule itself is fairly cut-and-dried it appears.
For analysis sake, I broke our 2025 schedule into 3 roughly equal blocks: 6-5-6. The first 6 games have 3 home & 3 away against (1) Falcons; (2) Texans; (3) Jets; (4) Eagles; (5) Seahawks; (6) 49ers. It’d be really nice to start at 4-2, BUT … personally I’d be happy to break even to start the season with those 6 games.
The next 5 games have 1 home & 4 away against (1) Lions; (2) Saints; (3) Patriots; (4) Bills; (5) Rams. The worst we SHOULD do against those 5 teams is 2-3. That’d get us to a 5-6 record 11 games into the season (MAYBE a 6-5 record).
The last 6 games favor the Bucs because we have 4 home games & 2 away games (both in the South), against (1) Cardinals; (2) Saints; (3) Falcons; (4) Panthers; (5) Dolphins; (6) Panthers. I could see us finishing with 4 wins, maybe even 5 wins.
Given all that ‘speculation’, we’d finish with a 10-7 record at worst, and an 11-6 record at best. SHOULD be enough to win the NFC South again. That SHOULD also take us into the playoffs on a nice winning streak (hopefully). I believe that we can be Super Bowl contenders this year, but again, every year … every game … stands on its’own merit.
May 21st, 2025 at 4:33 am
Our bye week is perfectly placed. This is a plus.
Reading what Shook said about the other teams we face was interesting with the Bucs being mentioned in their “Showdowns section.” I am feeling really good about this season. Excellent roster. If the players can stay healthy and we don’t have a lot of bad calls, we are going to be better than ever!