It’s time to renew another rivalry in the NFC South, where the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have completely shared the spoils throughout their 64 historic matchups, each one winning 32 of those.
From 2016 through 2022, both Atlanta and Tampa traded dominating stretches of success over the other team. Under Matt Ryan and Dan Quinn, the Falcons won five meetings in the row and six out of seven between 2016 and 2019.
Things completely shifted with Tom Brady’s arrival, who brought his legacy
of beating up on Atlanta to his new NFC South team. The Bucs won five in a row themselves through the 2022 calendar year.
The pendulum re-shifted in Atlanta’s favor with Brady’s departure, even with Baker Mayfield being a worthy heir to the Bucs quarterback throne. The Birds won four of the next five matchups leading up to the 2025 season, as each team has spent some time leading this season series over the past years.
Last Meeting
Week 1 of this season felt bigger than usual. After the Falcons and Bucs spent the last two years as the primary candidates for division supremacy — with Tampa triumphing each time — they were immediately set to duel it out in a season opening game where the winner would set the tone for what would likely be another tight division race.
Bijan Robinson set his own tone early in this one, catching a short pass in the flat and housing it for a 50-yard touchdown on Atlanta’s first offensive possession of the season. Atlanta’s defense followed this by forcing back to back 3-and-outs, but the offense failed to find its footing as they were presented with that golden opportunity.
The Falcons went scoreless on their next three possessions and found themselves needing to put together a very long field goal scoring drive to just tie the game going into the break after rookie Emeka Egbuka was the recipient of a 30-yard touchdown catch on Tampa’s penultimate drive of the first half.
The defenses remained stout in the second half with a Bucky Irving touchdown the reason for a four-point lead going into the fourth quarter, even after Younghoe Koo’s second field goal of the game. Atlanta received the ball staring down this deficit with 11:03 remaining in the game, and went on a monstrous 18-play drive which burned 8:40 of that time off the clock and resulted in a heart palpitating Michael Penix rushing touchdown on 4th-and-goal which just broke the plain (after further review).
The Bucs, conversely, needed just five plays to go all the way downfield and score their own touchdown, via Egbuka again, but Chase McLaughlin’s second missed kick of the day kept the Birds within a field goal. Penix very quickly worked the Falcons within field goal range in just 53 seconds, before Koo missed wide right from 44 yards out to really set the tone for what would be a nightmare season in Atlanta.
