Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Buddy, I feel disrespected and undervalued just having to watch your team play football.
Your 2025 record: 8-9. Normally, this would be enough to win the NFC South, as the Bucs had for four straight seasons prior to 2025. But Carolina ended up with a better 8-9 record this time around, depriving Tampa of the hallowed Golden Plunger trophy awarded every year to that division's "champion." The Bucs had a stranglehold on first place after a 6-2 start, but then pissed it away in suitably grotesque fashion. How did it happen? Reader, I can't wait to fill you in.
Perhaps the Bucs should have sensed danger early on, when they got got by a fake tush push in a beatdown courtesy of the Eagles. The rest of the league solved the tush push a season ago, but you know how Florida enjoys being 70 years behind the times on everything. Anyway, our heroes rebounded from that loss with a win in Seattle against the eventual Super Bowl champs. There was even talk back then of QB Baker Mayfield being an MVP candidate. Wow! Amazing! Fuck me in the pants!
The good vibes, like Doug Martin, soon died. I love a good midseason MVP candidate who falls off dramatically in the home stretch, and the Bucs' leading girlboydadboss proceeded to do just that. My man faded quicker than your grandma in hospice, with this gaudy interception at the end of a loss to Carolina being the death blow. Now, we could forgive Mayfield for his poor play on the back nine because everyone else important on the team—Mike Evans, Emeka Egbuka, Bucky Irving, Tristan Wirfs, Calijah Kancey—got hurt at some point. Hell, Mayfield himself suffered a million nagging injuries that he got to show off as war wounds when bussin' with the boys. But I have no interest in cutting this guy any slack. Why? Because fuck Baker Mayfield, that's why.
Here now are further details of the Bucs' demise. New England RB TreVeyon Hendersom scored a 6nice-yard TD to seal a Pats win against them. The week after that, Buffalo QB Josh Allen (here's what real MVP material looks like, Baker) posted 300 yards on Tampa despite Tyrell Shavers being his leading wideout. A week after that, the Rams put 31 points on them in the first half alone. There would be no miracle comeback.
A week after that, they beat the Arizona Cardinals. No one cared.
Four straight losses would follow. The Bucs were beaten at home by Ty Shough. They committed 19 penalties against Atlanta, a game in which they led 28-14 in the fourth quarter only to lose on a field goal as time expired. Then came the aforementioned Panthers loss, followed by a truly appalling loss to a Miami team that was starting Quinn Ewers at quarterback. That Dolphins game all but ended Tampa's playoff hopes. What the fuck happened? Wasn't this team at least supposed to at least have a good defense?
Your coach: Still Todd Bowles, who may as well wear a hat that says I'D RATHER BE FISHIN' whenever he's on camera. You thought Bowles was a dead man at the end of last season, but no. The Bucs instead let Bowles fire the bulk of his staff in January so that the coach could serve as a lame duck until right around October, when they can summarily fire him without having any real vision for what comes next. Until then, let's all enjoy Bowles calling too many blitzes, electing to punt every time he should go for it, and standing around on the sideline acting as if he has nothing to do with what's happening out there.
If Bowles had any saving grace prior to 2025, it was his excellent taste in offensive coordinators: Dave Canales, Liam Coen, etc. That golden hiring streak came to a screeching halt last season with the since-fired OC Josh Grizzard, who was replaced this offseason with former Falcons OC Zac Robinson. You know, the guy who turned Michael Penix into a star! Didn't he? He didn't? Well shitfire, what in tarnation do we do now?
Your quarterback: Mayfield, who has adopted the Greater Tampa mindset in which he spends the bulk of his time vaguely fuming about all of the ways he's being mistreated and abused. Your grandparents living in Naples adore him.
Baker is in the final year of his contract and was angling for a new deal prior to training camp. But GM Jason Licht, who knows better, refused to pony up for the lengthy extension that Baker and his reps were asking for, and now our little man is big mad. But that ire could prove motivating, couldn't it, Charissa Thompson?
"It sure could, Drew. I spoke to Baker just before you wrote this preview and he told me that his contract situation was what it was and that actually, he was glad he didn't get an extension this summer because, he says, 'It's pushed me to a level I didn't even know I had.' And Drew, his teammates have noticed, with one of them telling me that he spotted Baker doing shirtless pushups with RFK Jr. at the team facility at 5:00 a.m. the other morning."
Your QB2 is Jake Browning. All of the ingredients necessary for a proper tank job are right here. Someone in the Bucs front office just has to slip some measles into Baker's pancakes and Arch Manning is all yours.
What's new that sucks: It's not just Baker who's disgruntled in Tampa! So is DT Vita Vea! And so are fans who just had to say goodbye to team legends Mike Evans and Lavonte David this offseason! In fact, the Bucs had an offseason exodus that will make you groan, and that's before I even get to the 5,000 camp injuries they've had so far. With David retiring and Evans fucking off to Kyle Shanahan's crematorium in San Francisco, the team also lost stud CB Jamel Dean, plus role players in RB Rachaaaaaaad White, DT Logan Hall, and S Christian Izien. Free-agent patches were minimal, mostly in the form of scatback Kenny Gainwell, horrible backup T Justin Skule, and former Detroit LB Alex Anzalone. Give any white linebacker long hair and his jersey will sell out locally within seconds.
Wirfs, this team's best player, has already suffered minor injuries in camp. So have Browning, WRs Tez Johnson and Jalen McMillan, and CB Benjamin Morrison, who came to this organization pre-busted in the 2025 draft. The good news is that Licht got himself the unofficial steal of the 2026 Draft when Miami EDGE Rueben Bain tumbled out of the top five all the way down to No. 15. Bain may have dropped in the first round because his arms are short, or because he killed a woman in a car accident two years ago. Who's to say? Destiny Betts was 22 years old when Bain crashed the car that she and two other people were also riding in. Betts was in a coma for three months before finally dying, after which Andy Reid's family filed adoption papers to take in Bain as one of their own.
Also new here is third-round combine wonder WR Ted Hurst. Should be fun to see who gets injured first between this newcomer and WR Chris Godwin, the latter of whom is the best receiver in the league who will never play more than eight games in any given season.
The cops murdered Doug Martin. Half of Tampa probably cheered.
What has always sucked: Should we talk about how ownership lost interest in this team a million years ago? Or how the Bucs have never figured out a decent color scheme? Or how their two championships are, like the Miami Marlins' two World Series victories, something that history would prefer not to catalog? Nah, let's just shit on Florida instead:
Florida is Ron DeSantis. It is Marco Rubio. It is Pam Bondi, Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Aileen Cannon, Jon Gruden, Fred Durst, Hulk Hogan, and Tiger Woods' wife assaulting his car with a nine iron. It sits on the bottom on the contiguous 48 not unlike a boat anchor, its only purpose to drag the rest of us down into the depths with it. If Iran dropped a nuke on the Gold Coast tomorrow, I'd dap up the Ayotollah and then offer to make him a pot of tea. Fuck this asshole state, and fuck every one of its people with a baby alligator.
What might not suck: Bain is legit. However, Will Campbell would advise him to never play in a Super Bowl. That's when the whole short-arms thing really comes back to bite you.
HEAR IT FROM BUCS FANS!
Cole:
Mike Evans is gone.
Dave:
The Bucs have so few fans that you reused my submission from two years ago last year.
Josh:
I'm cursed with being both a Bucs fan and a Man United fan, which means that for most of the last decade, one way or another, the Glazer family has found a way to ruin my weekend. Getting lost in one of their soulless fucking shopping panopticons would be less spiritually bankrupt than watching this team, honestly.
This is an organisation that somehow fluked into Baker Mayfield being an above average NFL starter, and now they're acting like he's the mugging ghost of Jameis Winston and telling him to prove it, after he spent half of last season playing through more grim injuries than an average day shift at
The Pitt. We still would've won the division if Todd Bowles could still coach a fucking defense to not give up comically inept big plays.Oh, and now the guy primarily responsible for making our run defense not be embarrassing for the last half a decade is so sick of this whole fucking shitshow he'd rather get traded to the Dolphins than spend another moment looking at Todd's unconvincing wise old man schtick.
They even (correctly) took Gruden off the Ring Of Honor when he was revealed to be a bigoted shitbag, and then just … stuck him back up there as soon as it was socially acceptable to be a racist in America again.
Fuck this team, we don't even have Gene Deckerhoff to take the edge off this year.
Alex:
Giving up a 3rd and 28 to the Falcons was fitting because it is the inverse of 28-3.
Joe:
Here's hoping I'm not the only Bucs fan who writes to you. I'm an average-size white guy and skinny and love to run long distances here in FL. So I thought it would be funny to buy a Vita Vea jersey, as people would appreciate the irony of me wearing the jersey of a man the exact opposite size of me.
Instead of Tampa folks getting the irony, I get asked questions such as "Bro, is your last name really Vea?" Or "Why are you wearing a football jersey to run a 10K?" No one seems to realize that Vea is a game-wrecking beast for a professional football team from Tampa. So fuck this bland, boring-ass team that is unrecognizable despite being part of the most popular league in the U.S and fuck my shitty-ass falling-apart Fanatics Vea jersey.
Josh:
Is this team tanking? I can't tell if we're tanking.
Dave:
They still have the worst winning percentage of all time, but this season they could catch the CARDINALS.
Ladanian:
I just can't go to games anymore. So many of these dipshits I talk to watch film breakdowns on YouTube and think they're Sean McVay. I just can't deal with these bros screaming at the top of their lungs things like, "We need to run more Duo.” None of these asshats have a clue what Duo is, or that maybe there's no need to run when we're down 14 points late in the 4th quarter. Watching the all-22 tape is not helping these idiots.
On a positive note, this should be the last year we watch Todd Bowles stoically do nothing except throw people under the bus while he chokes away the world's easiest division title.
David:
"They're ready to compete for the NFC South championship!" Yeah, so's your mom.
In 30+ years, this team has never had back-to-back winning seasons.
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