Two Quirks On Bucs’ 2025 Schedule
May 16th, 2025
Cakewalk ending to season.
One reason Joe enjoys reading Warren Sharp’s work is that he often takes a very detailed, if not unique look into otherwise misleading information.
Take strength of schedules. Sharp, a handicapper turned statgeek, thinks the common way people look at strength of schedules is off base.
Most people look at opposing teams’ records from the previous season. With so much roster turnover, Sharp says, that’s an inaccurate method.
Also, Sharp heavily favors teams that have more rest between games. In other words, he calculates total days between games, amount of travel and when teams have byes as factors for their strength of schedule.
Regarding the Bucs, Sharp has found two oddities.
The first is, the Bucs are one of just four teams to start the season on the road with multiple games.
First two games on the road:
Carolina Panthers
New York Giants
San Francisco 49ers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sharp believes if the Bucs can keep their heads above water until Week 12, the home stretch greatly favors the Bucs. Sharp has determined that from Week 12-18, the Bucs have the fourth-easiest schedule in the league.
What NFL teams have the easiest schedules from Week 12 to Week 18:
San Francisco 49ers
Jacksonville Jaguars
New Orleans Saints
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Atlanta Falcons
Yeah, Joe noticed the Dixie Chicks also have a cakewalk ending to the season, except for the Rams in Week 17. So Joe thinks it’s imperative the Bucs win the season opener in Billy Sherman’s summer home to open the season — and even better to sweep the Dixie Chicks like they did to the Bucs last season.
Overall, Sharp has the Bucs with the No. 9 toughest strength of schedule.
May 16th, 2025 at 12:10 am
Maybe, when a critical game decision hangs in the balance of whether you let your top 5 offense try to win it, or your bottom 4 defense prevent losing it…..you don’t call the Gypsy in the booth and ask her what Mars in retrograde means to the potential of potato salad in March.
Geniuses understand.
You have your awful pass defense try to win it.
Oh, wait.
May 16th, 2025 at 12:19 am
It seems like he weights previous seasons results to an extent. The Lions and Eagles certainly aren’t the same teams they were last year and those look like some of the toughest games.
May 16th, 2025 at 12:23 am
And our division still looks like it will be weak.
May 16th, 2025 at 12:42 am
I guess I am the only one who finds the gaslighting of the schedule as nauseating as all the mock drafts.
May 16th, 2025 at 1:34 am
Delusional
I agree the schedule thing is eh. We gonna play who we gonna play. Only real benefit is knowing when the prime time games are.
May 16th, 2025 at 4:29 am
Thank you for the link to the article. Interesting for sure. Hoping for sure that week 12-18 are all winning for the Bucs.
I could be wrong, AI plays a large part of the scheduling and then the NFL execs do their own changes.
May 16th, 2025 at 6:09 am
Delusional
Agree completely. But then I’m old school..as in very OLD school!
I still believe in the axiom on any given Sunday!!! And perhaps just anecdotally and my memory is distorted, but the Bucs seem to have illustrated that ole bromide better than any team in the league.
How many times have the Bucs whipped teams they shouldn’t have only to lose to a struggling rookie QB who the Bucs make look good.
I DO NOT TAKE ANY GAMES ON THE SCHEDULE FOR GRANTED!
IMHO The Bucs can win OR lose any of them.
May 16th, 2025 at 6:58 am
What Aqualung said.
Seriously.
(As visions of Tom Brady throwing his helmet on the sideline in disgust during the Cleveland game a couple of years ago, dance through my head).
(Or Baker wincing when the Chiefs won the coin toss going into overtime during that night game last year).
Looking at it differently…
It seems to me that Sharpe’s way of determining strength of schedule makes more sense.
Obviously, you still have to factor in personnel, but travel and rest time are huge factors that I’ve always considered when I look at whether I think we’ll win a game.
It’s interesting to note the Falcons have the same strength of schedule as we do during those final six games.
Regardless of any travel, rest, gypsies, Mars or potato salad, if we keep our heads down, play good football on both sides of the ball, and can limit injuries, we’ll go well into the post-season this year! 🙂
May 16th, 2025 at 7:30 am
Delusional…
I’m with you. Strength of schedule is garbage until very late in the season. And by then, you better have your crap together and very few players on IR.
Season to season there’s just too many changes to grade how much of an effect they will make. With teams losing players, gaining players, drafting new players, having coaching changes with all the positional coaches on up to head coach and front office, possible system changes, players developing into better players, players getting older and other intangibles like injuries and weather and just the way a team plays together with all the previous variables, very hard to gauge. Every season there’s a handful of teams that are way better than anyone expected and a handful of teams that underperform based on expectation.
All you can really do is base it on how last season’s teams did and weigh those previously stated changes as a collective positive or negative, which are really just fully opinion based. Not scientific at all and a total guessing game.
The coaches know this as well and they also know there’s a small difference between the best team and the worst team. Sometimes, without really any good reason, the best team will play like the worst team and vice versa, pretty much out of nowhere. Never look past a game, always play week to week and never take anybody lightly. Probably harder than it sounds.
May 16th, 2025 at 7:37 am
With a whole lot of that being said, LOL, I think the Bucs are a better team than they were last year and if they don’t have any major injuries to any key players, they can beat anybody on this schedule. This is when it will comes down to coaching. Will Bowles push all the right buttons and make good end-game decisions? Will Griz ended up being a really good OC and call the right plays at the right time keeping our offense top 5? Will Bowles defensive epiphany and tweaking of the defense push them into the top 10 and keep them from letting possible victories slip away?
We shall see. Very exciting stuff!
May 16th, 2025 at 8:04 am
Delusional – 100%. I will never understand how this gets so much coverage. We already know who the opponents so who cares. Love the draft because it has an impact on the future. Schedule release, I could not care less.
May 16th, 2025 at 9:02 am
Schedule discussion is crazy. All these teams have no real home field advantage. All that came from the old days when they’d put the visiting team in some roach motel with cold showers 50 miles from the stadium. This is a luxury sport with chartered aircraft.
We also have no idea who will be the surprise teams and who will be the injured teams. The Panthers could be 14-3. The Chiefs could finally wear out with that brutal schedule of Brazil and Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
I doubt it, but who knows.
May 16th, 2025 at 10:20 am
Aqualung is right on target as usual.
Without that easy schedule the grand canyon known as the Todd Bowles pass defense just gets nuked out and there is no meaningless NFC Least title.
All the SB talk is just insane at this point. We have not earned that discussion yet.
Washington has earned that discussion as they made an NFC title game.
That is typically when you are on the cusp of taking the next step.
Going 1-3 in the postseason over 3 years and only beating a floundering Eagles team without their two best WRs doesn’t measure up.
Defense wins championships. Who here thinks the Bowles defense is capable of that?
Anyone, anyone?? Beuller, Beuller???
May 16th, 2025 at 12:44 pm
yeah i’m thinking we come flying out the gate again…
then the midseason lull……..again…!
then we get rolling down the stretch again, and into the playoffs…
same as the last couple of years…as our schedule is built for it………again…
if we can somehow avoid the heavy midseason lull, we could seemingly have quite a fine season in 2025…
i think thru week 6 we are good…no lull and a lot of wins…with the potential to even be 5-1 at that point and the talk of the league…
then the lull games…
after week 7 – which will be a loss to detroit…the lull potential is weeks 8 thru 13…
i’m concerned about if we just sleepwalk in the new orleans game going into the bye…or sleepwalk in the patriots game coming out of the bye…i’m more so concerned about the pats game as it’s also a sleeper trap game, right before 2 potential road losses in buffalo and los angeles…
then if we are in a funk or heavy lull, i’m even concerned about climbing out of it vs arizona at home…
so weeks 8 thru 13 is where we hit the skids in IMHPO (in my humble prognosticating opinion…
then as we come down the home stretch we get rolling again…
so weeks 8-13 we could get jammed up…and maybe even have a 3 game losing streak…
early success…mid skid…back on track down the stretch…
if we just don’t hit the skids midseason, and at least tread water thru that portion of the schedule, we could possibly even win 12 games
(which is my absolute ceiling number for wins this year)
May 16th, 2025 at 12:44 pm
All of this is fun to ponder for sure. How many road games in a row vs home games? When is the bye week? How many miles do we travel? Who do we finish the season against? When are the prime time games? Do we have short weeks? What will the weather be like? Here’s the bottom line though…to be a great team, none of those things can really matter. To be a great team the end of the day you have to go out and score at least one more point than the opponent no matter the circumstances. Period. Everything else is just excuse crafting.
May 16th, 2025 at 1:52 pm
I like that we play Falcons first on the road. We can do this.
May 16th, 2025 at 3:26 pm
The flaw is using the previous seasons, won. loss record. Last year did anyone believe that Washington would be in the playoffs before the season started or Minnesota would win 13 games or Dallas would win only 7.
May 16th, 2025 at 3:45 pm
@Buddha:
yep there’s alway gonna be a couple teams every year that completely buck the system or change their fate…
we were that team in 1997…and graced the cover of sports illustrated that year, after the niners game, and altering their season with game changing injuries…
and denver last year, were supposed to be scrubs…but never underestimate a sean payton coached team
May 16th, 2025 at 4:23 pm
Two home games going into the short week, with little travel. And it’s after the bye.
May 16th, 2025 at 6:25 pm
The Buffalo Bills, up in Buffalo in late November and the weather, might be problematic. West Coast travels are also an annual issue with the Bucs. 10-7 or 11-6 is our humble prediction
May 16th, 2025 at 7:36 pm
@Joe – according to Sharp’s site, he has the Bucs with the 10th EASIEST schedule, not hardest…
(Niners have the #1 easiest schedule)
May 16th, 2025 at 8:22 pm
The home schedule seems easy. 7-1 easy. But all that goes out the window every Sunday.