Each Friday this NFL season, we’re taking a quick look at the league’s most interesting team in action that weekend. This week, we’re going with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Why the Bucs? Because we’ve been trying all year to determine whether the Jameis Winston-led Buccaneers are good, bad or something in between. Usually when you’ve got an incredibly talented young quarterback, you’re one or the other. But Tampa Bay is an enigma. The Bucs have beaten the Falcons, Panthers and Chiefs on the road, but they’ve lost to the sub-.500 Cardinals and Rams (Los Angeles at home!).
Why this week? Because they’ve won back-to-back games in order to move to within one game of the AFC South-leading Atlanta Falcons. Winston has 11 touchdowns, two interceptions and a 103.8 passer rating since Tampa’s Week 6 bye, and the Bucs are 3-2 during that stretch. But this is a team that hasn’t had a three-game winning streak since 2013, and in order to finally accomplish that feat they’ll have to pick up a home victory against one of the league’s best teams — the Seattle Seahawks.
What should we expect? I feel like I say this every week, but the beauty is we don’t have a clue. Will we see the Tampa team that crushed the Bears and somehow upset the better-than-you-think Chiefs on the road? Or will we see the team that hardly showed up to play a home game against Atlanta in Week 9? One way or another, we’ll probably get a feel for whether Winston’s squad is ready to contend.
Put it all together and for at least one weekend, the Buccaneers are America’s most interesting football team.
