Buccaneers vs. Falcons Game Preview

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers restored some of the momentum from their 2-0 start with a dominant performance against Philadelphia in Week Four after a desultory Week Three loss to Denver. However, they now face a potentially pivotal stretch in their season, as they play three of their next four games against division opponents in a tightly-packed NFC South. That starts on Thursday Night Football in Atlanta, as the Buccaneers take the prime-time stage for the first time in 2024.

The Buccaneers are 3-1 after grounding the Eagles, 33-16, while the Falcons are 2-2 following a last-second victory over New Orleans on a 58-yard Younghoe Koo field goal. So far, the Bucs have held their ground in the division against an Atlanta team that was widely considered the favorite after the addition of Kirk Cousins, but that could be in jeopardy over the next month. The Buccaneers and Falcons will also do battle in Week Eight at Raymond James Stadium.

Most of all, the Bucs want to build on that early-season momentum, something they failed to do in 2023 when a similar 3-1 start devolved into a 1-6 stretch that nearly put them out of the playoff hunt.

“You try to treat any game the same, but you know the weight that it carries when you know divisional opponents,” said quarterback Baker Mayfield, who is off to his own fast start with a 106.9 passer rating and eight touchdown passes. “And just the opportunity on a short week, playing somebody on the road, it’s a great opportunity for us to continue to build what we’ve had so far. I think back to last year…every year’s different but I think back to last year and we were 3-1, too. Now I wouldn’t say that we operated as clean and we knew our identity, but right now, don’t take anything for granted. Just because you start 3-1, it’s a long year and we’ve got to continue to improve and just build as the year goes on.”

The Falcons pose a significant threat to the Bucs’ upward trajectory. The defense features an imposing pair of veteran safeties in Jessie Bates and Justin Simmons, plus the interior line duo of Grady Jarrett and David Onyemata. The offense, now led by Kirk Cousins, is peppered with recent top-10 draft picks at every skill position and is propelled by Chris Lindstrom, Jake Matthews and a very strong offensive line.

Atlanta has a new coaching staff led by Raheem Morris and a number of new faces on the roster, including Cousins, Simmons, edge rusher Matthew Judon and wideout Darnell Mooney.

“They’re different offensively and defensively,” said Head Coach Todd Bowles, comparing the 2024 Falcons team to one they split with in 2023. “They’re playing faster and they’re playing with a lot of confidence. They added quite a few guys – they’ve got a lot of talent over there. They can beat you a bunch of different ways. We’ve got to be on our P’s and Q’s.”

The Buccaneers also face the challenge of a short week with travel, plus a lengthy injury report that still includes such key players as right tackle Luke Goedeke, defensive lineman Calijah Kancey and All-Pro safety Antoine Winfield Jr. The season and the division race won’t be decided on Thursday night, but the Buccaneers do recognize the importance of the game, even if they don’t want that to dominate their thoughts.

“It’s definitely a huge opportunity for us but we can only take it one game at a time, right?” said wide receiver Chris Godwin. “We for sure cannot be looking past anybody, let alone one of our division rivals that presents a really big challenge for us. It’s going to be a big game for us, especially on a short week. We’ve got to make sure that we’re on our P’s and Q’s in the film room and in our gameplan to be able to go in there into a hostile environment. I’m sure their stadium will be rocking. It’s going to be a tough challenge for us, but I think we’re up to the task.”

GAME AND BROADCAST DETAILS

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-1) at Atlanta Falcons (2-2)

Thursday, October 3, 8:15 p.m. ET

Mercedes-Benz Stadium (capacity: 72,000)

TV Broadcast Team: Al Michaels (play-by-play), Kirk Herbstreit (analyst), Kaylee Hartung (reporter)

Radio: 98Rock (WXTB, 97.9 FM), Flagship Station

Radio Broadcast Team: Gene Deckerhoff (play-by-play), Dave Moore (analyst), T.J. Rives (reporter)

Spanish Radio: 96.1 Caliente

Spanish Radio Broadcast Team: Carlos Bohorquez (play-by-play), Martin Gramática (analyst)

ALL-TIME HEAD-TO-HEAD SERIES

The Buccaneers and Falcons have played each other 61 times since 1977, and the series is as close as it can get with an odd number of games played. Last season, Atlanta initially tied it up at 30-30 with a 16-13, at Raymond James Stadium, but the Bucs took the lead back later in the season with a 29-25 victory in Atlanta. The first of those games was also tied three times, at 7-7, 10-10 and 13-13, before Atlanta kicker Younghoe Koo won it at the buzzer with a 51-yard field goal. Mike Evans scored the Bucs’ only touchdown on a 40-yard catch, and safety Antoine Winfield Jr. kept his team alive in the fourth quarter with a remarkable forced fumble at the goal line against quarterback Desmond Ridder. In the rematch, Ridder put the Falcons ahead, 25-22, with three minutes left on a six-yard touchdown keeper but Baker Mayfield was able to counter that with a 12-play, 75-yard drive ending in his 11-yard touchdown pass to Cade Otton.

Overall, the Bucs-Falcons head-to-head record has rarely strayed too far from dead even. In fact, when the Buccaneers defeated the Falcons in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Week 13 of the 2021 campaign, completing a season sweep, it caused the series lead to change hands for the eighth time overall. The Buccaneers upped their lead to two games with a 21-15 win over Atlanta in Tampa in October of 2022 but the Falcons brought it back down to one, 30-29, by earning the split with a 30-17 decision in the regular-season finale. Overall, the Buccaneers have won six of the last eight meetings in the series.

Since the Bucs and Falcons became fellow NFC South denizens in 2002, the two teams are tied at 22-21. The Bucs’ longest winning streak in the series is six, between 1997 and 2003; the Falcons have won five in a row on two occasions, first from 2008-10 and again from 2016-18.

The Falcons won the 2022 regular-season finale, a contest in which the Buccaneers, having already been locked into the fourth seed in the NFC playoff field, rested many of their starters and pulled most of the rest early in the contest. Ridder, in just his fourth career start, threw for 224 yards and two touchdowns and Atlanta’s defense held the Bucs to 222 total yards of offense.

Earlier in the 2022 season, the Buccaneers held on to a 21-15 victory despite a late Atlanta comeback. Tampa Bay controlled the action for three quarters and used two Leonard Fournette touchdowns to take a 21-0 lead into the final period before Atlanta stormed back with two touchdowns. After an Olamide Zaccheaus touchdown catch made it a one-score game, the Bucs’ offense was able to drain the final 4:38 from the clock with one long drive.

The Bucs’ two wins in 2021 were both by double-digit margins. In Week at Raymond James Stadium, the Buccaneers got five touchdown passes from Tom Brady, including two each to Mike Evans and Rob Gronkowski – plus Mike Edwards’ two fourth-quarter pick-sixes as an exclamation in a 48-25 victory. In the rematch in in Atlanta, Chris Godwin set a team single-game record with 15 catches and Gronkowski once again found the end zone twice in Tampa Bay’s 13-point win. Russell Gage, who is now a Buccaneer, caught 11 passes for 130 yards for the Falcons.

Prior to briefly retaking the series lead in 2021, the Buccaneers had been on top with a 24-22 advantage midway through the 2016 season before Atlanta reeled off five straight victories in a streak that included sweeps in 2017 and 2018. Tampa Bay has the all-time edge in scoring in the series, with 1,374 points to the Falcons’ 1,302.

In their run to the Super Bowl championship in 2020, the Buccaneers won eight straight spanning the regular season and the postseason, and they downed the Falcons twice in the final three weeks of the regular season, scoring a total of 75 points. Tampa Bay won, 31-27, at Atlanta in Week 15 and then took the rematch in Tampa by a 44-27 margin. The first win required a wild comeback after the Falcons raced out to a 17-0 halftime lead, with Tom Brady throwing for 330 yards and two touchdowns in the second half. The second game at Raymond James Stadium was less stressful, as the Buccaneers led from wire to wire, but included another huge day by Brady, who threw for 399 yards and four touchdowns.

The Buccaneers came close to taking both halves of the series in 2019, winning by a 35-22 score in Atlanta and taking a 22-16 lead into the fourth quarter in the Week 17 rematch in Tampa. However, Matt Ryan led a game-tying drive in the final three minutes of that contest, leading to Younghoe Koo’s 33-yard field goal as time expired in regulation. The Buccaneers won the overtime coin toss but lost the game on the first play of the extra period, as Jameis Winston’s last pass for Tampa Bay was picked off and returned 27 yards for a touchdown by Deion Jones.

Both of the games in 2018 went down to the wire, neither ending well for the Buccaneers. In Week Six in Atlanta, Tampa Bay rallied from a 15-point deficit to make it a 31-29 game with four minutes to play on Peyton Barber’s five-yard touchdown catch. The Falcons then tacked on a field goal to make it a five-point game with just over a minute to play but Winston got the visitors back into scoring range with consecutive completions of 18, 18 and 19 yards to DeSean Jackson, Mike Evans and Adam Humphries. With seven seconds left and the ball at Atlanta’s 21, the Bucs tried a tricky play in which Winston began to scramble up the middle and then suddenly attempted a lateral to Humphries. The ball ended up on the turf before Evans scooped it up and got a one-hopper off to Jackson, who appeared to have a path to the end zone pylon along the left sideline. However, Jackson couldn’t haul it in and time expired on a 34-29 Falcons victory.

In the Week 17 rematch, at Raymond James Stadium, the Bucs gave up a 10-point halftime lead and fell behind by 11 in the fourth quarter before once again rallying, this time taking the lead with five minutes to play on a 19-yard Chris Godwin touchdown catch. That was too much time to leave Ryan, however, and he hit Jones on a pair of 16-yard passes to get the ball into field goal range. Matt Bryant won it as time expired with a 37-yarder.

• Rich McKay, who is the chief executive officer of AMBSE and the Atlanta Falcons, is the son of John McKay, the first head coach in Buccaneers franchise history. Rich McKay also had a long stint as a Buccaneers executive, starting out as the vice president of football administration before taking on the title of General Manager in 1994. He maintained that position through much of the 2003 season before leaving for the Falcons.
• Atlanta Head Coach Raheem Morris began his NFL coaching career with the Buccaneers in 2002. Excluding the 2006 season, in which he was the defensive coordinator at Kansas, Morris spent nine seasons with the Buccaneers, progressing from a defensive quality control coach to defensive assistant to assistant defensive backs coach to defensive backs coach, all on Jon Gruden’s staff. At the end of the 2008 season, he was briefly tabbed to take over at defensive coordinator for the departing Monte Kiffin, but the team suddenly went in a different direction, letting Gruden go and promoting Morris to head coach. Morris held that position for three seasons (2009-11) as the Buccaneers compiled a 17-31 record.
• Morris is in his first year at the Falcons’ helm, and he brought Jimmy Lake with him from his pervious stop with the Rams to serve as his defensive coordinator. Lake had two separate stints on the Bucs’ coaching staff, first as an assistant defensive backs coach on Gruden’s staff (2006-07) and then as the defensive backs coach under Morris (2010-11).
• Falcons Pass Game Specialist/Game Management Coach Tim Berbenich, was on Tampa Bay’s coaching staff from 2006-11, starting out as an offensive quality control coach for two seasons before moving over to assistant running backs coach in 2008. Morris retained him on his staff when he took over the next season and Berbenich spent three years as an assistant wide receivers coach.
• Ike Hilliard, the Falcons’ wide receivers coach, played the last four years of his 12 as an NFL receiver in Tampa, from 2005-08. In those four seasons he recorded 178 receptions for 1,767 yards and eight touchdowns.
• Atlanta Inside Linebackers Coach Barrett Ruud was a second-round draft pick by the Buccaneers out of Nebraska in 2005. He played the first six of his eight seasons in the NFL in Tampa, starting 68 of the 95 games in which he appeared and amassing 657 tackles, 6.0 sacks, 22 tackles for loss, seven interceptions and seven, seven forced fumbles and five fumble recoveries.
• Another member of Morris’s Falcons staff, Outside Linebackers Coach Jacquies Smith played three seasons and one game of a fourth for the Buccaneers from 2014-17. He recorded 13.5 sacks in that span.
• Punter Bradley Pinion is in his third season in Atlanta after playing the previous three in a Buccaneers uniform. Pinion played in 47 games for the Buccaneers, posting a gross punting average of 43.6 yards and also serving as one of the NFL’s best kickoff specialists.
• Buccaneers Cornerbacks Coach Kevin Ross spent a small portion of his long NFL playing career in Atlanta, joining the Falcons in 1994 after 11 years with the Kansas City Chiefs. Ross played two seasons in Atlanta before finishing his playing career with one year in San Diego and one more back with the Chiefs.
• Keith Tandy, who joined the Buccaneers’ coaching staff in 2021 as a defensive/special teams assistant, wrapped up his NFL playing career with one season (2018) in Atlanta after six years on the field for Tampa Bay.
• Falcons Assistant Head Coach/Defense Jerry Gray played nine seasons in the NFL before beginning his coaching career. His final season as a player was with the Buccaneers in 1993.
• Defensive lineman Demone Harris, who is on the Falcons’ practice squad, first entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Buccaneers in 2018. He played in three total games for Tampa Bay in 2018 and 2019.