The Buccaneers might be the most hyped-up team in the NFL going into the 2021-2022 season, and obviously with good reason.
Tampa Bay Tom Brady at QB, and is coming off of the Bucs’ second Super Bowl victory in franchise history. The squad brought back all 22 starters from the previous season, and looks like its found another diamond in the rough in pass rushing first-round pick Joe Tryon-Shoyinka (pictured above).
Sounds like a recipe for success.
So my prediction for how this season will turn out for them is quite simple; the Bucs will go back to the Super Bowl. It will be a rematch between them and the Kansas City Chiefs. They will unfortunately lose to the Chiefs.
Now, I predicted the Bucs would lose to the Chiefs in the Super Bowl last year, too, and they proved me very wrong (as they thankfully did many times during the course of last season), but this year’s Chiefs team is a little different than last year’s.
Kansas City traded for former Ravens tackle Orlando Brown, Jr. Brown is considered by most to be one of the most talented young tackles in the NFL, and to add to what was a quietly productive offseason, the Chiefs had a very underrated draft, snagging some depth for their O-line in center Creed Humphrey and adding the talented linebacker Nick Bolton out of Missouri to help shore up the second level of that defense.
However, injuries happen, so I could be eating my words come Feb. 13 when we could watch Tom Brady lift his 8th Lombardi Trophy.
I know that seems like a lot of words to devote to talking about the Chiefs in an article about the Bucs’ upcoming regular season, but the Bucs are so head-and-shoulders above the competition in the NFC this year, it just seems like a forgone conclusion that a rematch is destined to happen.
I mean, the NFC South has to be one of the worst divisions in football right now. Who knows what the Falcons will do without Julio Jones, the Saints look like a hot mess, and the Panthers are as directionless as ever, with Sam Darnold at quarterback and a still talentless defense. The Bucs could easily go 6-0 in division play.
The rest of the NFC isn’t any better, with the only real competition potentially coming from Green Bay, but with their weird “Last Dance” situation, nobody can say with any real certainty how their season will turn out.
So that leaves us with the Bucs, Rams and Seahawks as the only teams with any shot of making the Super Bowl. Seattle’s offensive line still sucks, so if the Bucs draw the Seahawks in the playoffs, expect JPP, Shaq Barrett and JTS to have an absolute field day getting after Russell WIlson. The Rams have Matthew Stafford at QB, and he hasn’t really played in any big games in his career due to his having played with the Detroit Lions for all of it.
All of that spells an absolute breezy path to the Super Bowl. And as much as superstition sometimes gets the better of me, even I couldn’t jinx this team into failing to reach the Super Bowl.
But then again, it is the Bucs. You never truly know.
The campaign kicks off on Thursday, Sept. 9 in Tampa when the Dallas Cowboys visit Raymond James Stadium.
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