Buccaneers: Winners and losers following Week 17 win against Saints

In their final game of the season the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5-11) gutted out a tough win at home against the New Orleans Saints (11-5). Which players were winners and losers from the contest?

The Buccaneers needed that one. Buccaneer fans needed that one. Jameis Winston needed that one.

It didn’t help their draft position at all, but boy, it’s hard to be disappointed with a victory. The Buccaneers have been losing so much this season that initially I accidentally typed “loss” instead of “victory”, and every Sunday is an opportunity to scrub out that losing mentality. For almost all of this game it felt as if the Bucs were just staving off the inevitable competitive loss, as they’ve grown accustomed to doing, but instead, against all odds, Buccaneer quarterback Jameis Winston had other plans.

Trailing 23-24 with 1:41 remaining in the game, Winston marched the Buccaneer offense 95 yards down the field with clutch pass after clutch pass. With fifteen seconds remaining in the Bucs season, Winston heaved a bomb down the right sideline to rookie Chris Godwin, who secured the pass and barreled into the end-zone. A completed two-point conversion from Winston to Evans sealed the deal and put a cherry on the Buccaneers season. One last time, let’s take a look at which players from the game were winners and losers.