Some extra drama was sprinkled onto an already stressful week for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with buzz building that this Sunday's game against the Seattle Seahawks might need to be altered.
Thanks to the MLB Postseason getting underway, and the Seattle Mariners being part of it as AL West champions for the first time since 2001, a potential scheduling snafu was created. Lumen Field and old Safeco Field (sorry, not calling it T-Mobile Park!) are right next to each other which meant having both a Seahawks and Mariners game happening at the same time simply wasn't possible.
It would have been a logistical nightmare, and the overcrowding a baseball playoff game combined with an NFL game would have been too much. Thankfully, we can talk about this in past tense because it's no longer a problem.
Buccaneers-Seahawks kickoff time for Week 5 is officially set in stone
After all the hullabaloo and rumors about the kickoff time changing, it turns out that things will remain just as they were. Todd Bowles confirmed that this Sunday's game will start at its regularly scheduled time of 4:05 p.m. ET.
The Bucs-Seahawks game will kick off at 4:05 EST as scheduled, Todd Bowles said.
— Rick Stroud (@NFLSTROUD) October 1, 2025
MLB released its schedule for the ALDS and the Mariners game won't start until after 8 pm E.T., which means the Bucs-Seahawks game can kick off at its normal time and not create any issues.
Up until this point it was looking like the Bucs game might have to move into primetime to allow for an early afternoon start to the Mariners game, but MLB wisely deicded that a later game for that market makes the best sense both logisitcally and froma showcase standpoint.
Seattle hasn't been this good since it set an all-time record for wins back in 2001, which was Ichiro's rookie season. That's how long it's been since Mariners fans have been this excited, even though the team made the playoffs back in 2022.
Bucs fans can relate. There have been more painful seasons than joyous ones over the last few decades but it finally seems like the good times are rolling. Like Cal Raleigh putting Seattle on the national map with his MVP-worthy season, Baker Mayfield has taken on that role in Tampa and given the Bucs new life we didn't expect them to have.
All of this is to say, despite the rumblings of alternate kickoff times for Sunday's game -- which will feature both teams in their 1976 throwback uniforms -- things are going to off as originally intended.
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