Football is back and for the Buccaneers it is a chance to get the sour taste of last year’s collapse out of their mouths. Sure football is a 17 game season and as last year showed, it doesn’t quite matter as much how you start, it’s how you finish. However, in this particular case with this team, a fast start is critical.
Slow starts have not been a thing for Tampa Bay since Todd Bowles became head coach. In fact, the Bucs have started 2-0 in every season under Bowles and began last year’s campaign
3-0. During Bowles’ four-year tenure as head coach, the Bucs record in games through the first six weeks of the season is 18-6. That is a very good pace and something Tampa Bay will need to try and replicate in 2026.
The Bucs aren’t exactly starting off with the steepest of competition in the first six weeks either. Of the first six games played, only two of them will be against playoff teams from 2025 with those teams being the Green Bay Packers who come to town in week four and the Pittsburgh Steelers who will visit in week six. There is a real opportunity for Tampa Bay to come out of the gates out and they shouldn’t let it go to waste.
Why is a fast start so important for this year in particular? It’s quite simple. Noise. After a brutal and embarrassing second half collapse in 2025 which saw the team start 6-2 only to finish 8-9 and miss the playoffs the Bucs decided to retain head Todd Bowles and instead made changes elsewhere along the coaching staff. Many fans were not pleased with the decision to keep Bowles, and they let their frustrations very clear. Not only did they keep the head coach who was not so popular, but just a few months later franchise legends Lavonte David and Mike Evans would depart with David retiring and Evans headed to San Francisco to join the 49ers.
So not only did the team just suffer one of the worst collapses in franchise history, but they kept the head coach in place and then lost two of the most popular players and all-time franchise icons… yikes. Then the summer came and there were some uncomfortable conversations being had about Baker Mayfield’s status with the team beyond this year after the team and the quarterback could not get a long-term deal done before the deadline Mayfield had set. Mayfield was very vocal in expressing his frustrations in not getting a deal done and now enters 2026 in a contract year.
So what would a slow start do to this team? It could cause a lot of unwanted drama. Let’s say the team starts the season 2-4 with some disappointing losses along the way, the conversations would immediately turn to “is Todd Bowles coaching for his job soon?” or “if this gets bad enough will they bench Baker Mayfield?” these questions are not something the Bucs want to be asked at any point this season because if they are being brought up, then that means a lot of jobs will be on the line and the team would look a lot different in 2027.
It was a tough offseason for many fans after a disappointing end to the previous year but at the end of the day winning cures all and the Buccaneers have a golden opportunity in front of them to put up some wins early to give the fans something positive to talk about and look forward to each week rather than a weekly football soap opera.
