Buccaneers: Preview for most important game since 2003

Predictions

From an honest standpoint, this is a very difficult game to judge without bias. Everyone wants their favorite team to advance in the playoffs against a superior opponent.

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The Saints are an outstanding football team that has some of the best chemistry in the NFL. How they have kept their team together for as long as they have is beyond this writer, but it has led to tremendous amounts of success during the regular season for the duration of Brees’ career.

The Saints have been the big brother of this matchup for a long time now, and the regular season showed that this dynamic hasn’t shifted yet.

The good news for the Buccaneers is the playoffs are all about the hot team. Regular season stats and records don’t matter anymore. The only stat that matters now is the score at the end of the game, and the Buccaneers have been the much hotter team recently.

Sure, the other teams weren’t great, but Tampa Bay has still won one convincing game after another on their path to where they are today, and now, the pressure is all on New Orleans.

The Saints have already beaten the Bucs twice this season, which is a difficult prospect already, but now their task has grown to needing to beat Tom Brady three times in one season, something no team has ever done.

At the end of the day, this game comes down to two players; Tom Brady and Drew Brees. This will likely be the last matchup between these two ever, and it is sure to have fireworks from the opening whistle.

While the oddsmakers favor the Saints, the Bucs have all the momentum right now, and Tom Brady is the much better quarterback today. While one player rarely changes the entire outcome of a game by themselves, Tom Brady is a different player in the playoffs, which should lead to a different outcome today. Bucs by three.

Game prediction: Tampa Bay Buccaneers 27 New Orleans Saints 24

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