Predicting how many primetime games Buccaneers will have in 2023

Now that the glitzy shine of the Tom Brady era is gone, how many primetime games will be on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers schedule this year?

With the NFL schedule release finally giving us a look at what this upcoming season will look like, Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans are bracing themselves for a tremendous humbling.

Tom Brady retired this offseason and took with him the national spotlight that had been on the team for the last three seasons. Without Brady there is virtually no reason for the Bucs to get priority booking when it comes to the NFL scheduling primetime games this year.

Roger Goodell has stated that all teams will get a chance to be featured in primetime this year, but it’s not the first time the league has essentially mandated this. Remember when this promise resulted in every team getting scheduled for a Thursday Night Football game? This feels like a return to that.

As much as it stinks to consider, don’t expect the Bucs to be on Sunday Night Football nearly as often as they have been the last three years. Just because Tom Brady is gone and the media circus has moved on doesn’t mean Tampa Bay doesn’t have some games on its schedule that could end up being under the primetime lights.

Buccaneers schedule 2023: How many primetime games will Tampa Bay have?

The NFL allows for a maximum of five primetime games per team, before flexing gets factored in. That’s what the Buccaneers had been getting with Brady in town, but it’s foolish to expect the same now that he’s gone.

Each team is supposedly going to be getting at least one primetime game in an effort to expose the entire league to the widest possible audience. That’s a bit of a loaded promise, though, as Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football counts as a primetime game which means teams aren’t promised a coveted Sunday or Monday night slot.

For the Buccaneers there are a few games that stand out as potential primetime matchups.

• New Orleans Saints
• Carolina Panthers
• Indianapolis Colts

All three of those games have some sort of intrigue that could lead to a primetime slot.

In years past, at least one of the Bucs-Saints games has been put in primetime. This could be a Monday Night Football game, especially with the billing of Derek Carr vs. Baker Mayfield — which isn’t exactly sexy but the existence of the Manningcast could help this one land on ESPN.

Speaking of Baker, don’t rule out a Bucs-Panthers game billed as a revenge matchup landing in primetime. This is more of a Thursday Night Football flavor, though, but we’ve seen this matchup land in that slot before even when the teams were not very good.

One wild card matchup could be the Bucs and Colts. Anthony Richardson boosts the profile of the Colts and this game could be an excuse to get them in primetime, again thinking of this as a Thursday Night Football matchup.

Perhaps the Bucs and Packers land on Sunday Night Football as an excuse for NBC to get a broadcast at Lambeau, but it’s unlikely that the game will be high-quality enough to justify that.

It’s overall pretty tough sledding trying to find games that the NFL can justifiably put in primetime that involve the Buccaneers. Most of the games feel like the pre-Brady late afternoon NFL on FOX type of fodder.