The season is upon us. The Atlanta Falcons nearly made the playoffs a year ago in part because they beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers twice, and any playoff push this season will have to feature a win or two against a team that has been annoyingly good at winning the NFC South in recent years. There’s no time like Week 1 to leave a bruise on the Bucs.
We’ve discussed the need for a fast start multiple times throughout the summer, but it’s just as important as it was a year ago to stack a few wins early.
The Buccaneers, Panthers, Vikings, Bills, and Commanders are all on tap in the first six weeks—the Falcons also have a bye—and coming out of that at 3-2 or better would set Atlanta up for a tremendous season. Getting by the Bucs means surviving a shootout, in all likelihood, given that these two teams have played one-score games in each of their past six matchups, and both games last year saw the Falcons score over 30 points en route to victory.
A quick programming note: Generally I’d use rankings here as the first section, but the Falcons and Bucs haven’t played at all yet, and both teams are different enough from last year’s edition that I don’t know that it really serves us to carry 2024 statistics over. We’ll instead focus on how the Buccaneers have changed and what to expect Sunday.
How the Buccaneers have changed
It’s still Todd Bowles, Baker Mayfield, and the bones of the successful Bucs teams of yesteryear. Chris Godwin is back—though he won’t be available in Week 1—and so is Lavonte David, keeping two franchise greats around.
A team that’s loaded up with veteran contracts and trying to keep winning, as Tampa Bay is, does not necessarily have a lot of wiggle room with the cap. That proved true in 2025, where the team made a splash with Haason Reddick, the veteran pass rusher who dug in for a holdout last year but had been consistently productive in the years before that, and their second biggest signing was…Riley Dixon? A punter?
Their only other additions in free agency worth mentioning were depth-based, replacing Kyle Trask with the far better and more experience Teddy Bridgewater as Baker Mayfield’s backup. But keeping around Godwin and David, plus guard Ben Bredeson, should help them keep continuity and a high level of play, assuming those first two in particular are healthy through most of 2025.
The draft was where they really looked to make some noise, and their class was once again adored by draft analysts. Wide receiver Emeka Egbuka is a potentially elite slot receiver who will be asked to carry a heavy load early with Godwin not quite back and Jalen McMillan on the shelf, and a player the Bucs loved enough as one of their top options over the long haul to select him 19th overall. Benjamin Morrison dropped because of injury and hasn’t practiced in a month thanks to a hamstring injury, but is a genuinely talented player who should be a long-term starter if he can stay healthy. Fellow rookie cornerback Jacob Parrish appears to be the team’s starting nickel, however, and will be immediately tested working against Drake London and Ray-Ray McCloud in Week 1. David Walker was a popular sleeper and a player I had my eye on in the middle rounds for the Falcons before they went with Jalon Walker and James Pearce Jr. in the early rounds, but sadly is already on injured reserve.
The biggest loss might be offensive coordinator Liam Coen. I’m not someone who believes there is an infinitely deep well of brilliant offensive-minded choices out there for coordinator roles, and the Bucs have now lost their guy two offseasons in a row, filling the vacancy with an in-house promotion for Josh Grizzard. He was a longtime Dolphins assistant with five seasons as a quality control coach and two as a wide receivers coach before joining Tampa Bay last year as their passing game coordinator. As far as I’m aware, this will mark his first NFL play calling experience, in contrast to Coen, who had several years as a college offensive coordinator and one year with the Rams as an offensive coordinator in the league. Grizzard may well be brilliant sooner than later, but there figure to be some growing pains and potential shakiness as he learns on the job.
Still, overall this is the team you’ve come to know and not like very much in recent years. They’re flawed enough to be beatable and prone to bad stretches, which means the NFC South is up for grabs if the Falcons or Panthers can take advantage. At the same time, there’s simply too much talent here—particularly on offense—to expect Tampa Bay to finish with anything less than a winning record in 2025.
What to expect on Sunday
It should be an early shootout, albeit perhaps a sloppy one given the way Week 1 usually goes.
The Buccaneers are down Chris Godwin, Jalen McMillan, and Tristan Wirfs, while Cade Otton is recovering from an injury of his own. That weakens a formidable Tampa Bay attack and makes it a little more likely we’ll see Bad Baker, the interception-slinging quarterback he can morph into in tough spots. That said, Mike Evans is here, Emeka Egbuka is an intriguing young talent, and Bucky Irving is already one of the most underrated young backs in the NFL. The Bucs will test this defense early and often, and it will be up to a re-tooled pass rush to take advantage of Wifs’ absence and up to this secondary to take advantage of those inevitable careless Mayfield moments.
The Falcons, meanwhile, will have their hands full with Haason Reddick thanks to Elijah Wilkinson stepping into the lineup at right tackle, and may be without Darnell Mooney, but otherwise are looking pretty healthy offensively. The Bucs defense struggled mightily last year to stop Atlanta with Kirk Cousins catching fire, and Michael Penix Jr. is even more well-equipped to attack the soft middle of this Tampa Bay D. I’d expect a heavy dose of Drake London in the slot, even if Darnell Mooney can’t go, and some Penix bombs to Kyle Pitts to try to get those big plays early. The ground game is a trickier story—neither Bijan or Tyler Allgeier had great days in either matchup against the Bucs a year ago—but Bijan is efficient and effective enough to at least complement what’s hopefully a high-flying passing attack. The hope is that Atlanta’s run defense, which is a concern heading into the season, can do a good job of bottling up Irving the way they did a year ago; Rachaad White lurks as a pain in the ass receiving option out of the backfield.
Especially this year early in the year, mistakes are going to help define this matchup. Will Penix avoid misfires that could put the ball in peril, something we saw him do a handful of times in his brief starting stint a year ago? Will Mayfield be the crisp, efficient passer he was in the first matchup with Atlanta a year ago, or will he be forced to drop back an uncomfortable number of times like he was in the second matchup, when he threw two picks and fumbled? Will fill-in tackles be able to keep Mayfield and Penix upright, and will secondaries featuring some trouble spots and young starters be able to avoid being victimized by these two passing attacks?
There are subplots aplenty here, as there always are in NFC South battles, but I truly believe this will simply come down to which team is more productive through the air and better at avoiding costly mistakes on Sunday. Look for a fairly high-scoring matchup, regardless, and hope Atlanta emerges as a Week 1 victor to kick this thing off right.
