Coming into Sunday's game the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were riding a three-game winning streak but things didn't feel as good as they should have. The wins counted, but all three came against teams with losing records and two of them were much harder than they should have been.
Tampa Bay's thundering 40-17 win over the Chargers not only extended the winning streak, it codified confidence that this team belongs in the playoff conversation. Anyone wondering whether the Bucs have what it takes to hang with the big boys and not just steamroll bad teams should look no further than what happened against the No. 1 scoring defense in the NFL.
Liam Coen and Baker Mayfield carved up the top-ranked Chargers defense for 288 passing yards and four touchdowns -- 159 yards and two touchdowns of which belonged to Mike Evans. It was total domination on every level, and it was the type of win the Buccaneers needed at exactly the right time.
Buccaneers earned perhaps their biggest win of the season in Week 15
With just three games left on the schedule, the Bucs control both the NFC South and their own destiny to the playoffs. Not only that but the No. 3 seed is still very much on the table and within grasp, which is hard to believe given where we were just a month ago.
Tampa Bay fell into a brutal four game slump, but it was one where the team seemed to be its own worst enemy more than it was outmatched. The Bucs lost but they didn't get blown out, losing to the Chiefs, Ravens, and 49ers by 10 points or less (the Niners loss is less impressive now, but the Bucs might have faced the last most complete version of the team this season). Dumb mistakes added up quickly on Tampa Bay and compounded the losses, but it was clear even during that losing streak that this was a good team.
That's what made how things went so frustrating, but the version of the Bucs we saw on Sunday against the Chargers feels like the one we should have been watching the whole season. After a rough second quarter that tipped the scales in the Chargers' favor, Tampa Bay came screaming out of halftime like a bat out of hell. The Bucs scored 30 unanswered points and didn't let Justin Herbert's offense even come close to sniffing the endzone the rest of the way.
It was reminiscent of the win over the Saints earlier in the year, one that also featured a colossal meltdown in the second quarter. Tampa Bay fumbled away a 17-point lead and limped into halftime, only to install adjustments that saw the defense give up zero points the rest of the way while the offense ended up with four second half touchdowns.
Tampa Bay's defense once again clamped down to not allow a single second half point to be scored while Baker and the offense put on a show. What makes the feat even more impressive this time around is the fact that Todd Bowles' defense is so depleted by injury; Antoine Winfield Jr., Mike Edwards, and K.J. Britt were all out with Jordan Whitehead and SirVocea Dennis on IR.
It's hard to overstate just how impressive the win was, but the way the team won is what the locker room should feed off of -- and what should put the rest of the NFC on notice. There's a grittiness to the Bucs that often goes overlooked but Sunday was a reminder that this team never quits a fight. They went down swinging during the four game losing streak and made the sort of adjustments that winning teams do on Sunday. It's not the first time they've shook off a punch they took on the chin and it's pretty clear at this point it won't be the last.
After all the Bucs have gone through this season, from the losing streak to the bad injury luck, the blowout win on Sunday was exactly what the team needed and it couldn't have come at a better time.
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