The Tampa Bay Buccaneers certainly didn’t have the season they hoped for, finishing 8-9 and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2020.
Their absence from the postseason has left them on the outside looking in, but that doesn’t mean the fans don’t maintain a rooting interest.
While on paper, Tampa Bay had no direct stakes in the Championship Round games as the Seahawks toppled Rams in the NFC, and the Patriots defeated the Broncos in the AFC, the playoffs quietly delivered results that were nothing short of satisfying for Bucs fans.
Bucs fans have two big reasons to celebrate NFL Conference Championship Round results
The first, and most obvious reason why a large portion of the Bucs fan base were pulling for the Patriots is because of the man at the helm of the Broncos. Any chance to root against Sean Payton is one that Tampa Bay’s fanbase simply can’t pass up.
Payton is a dominant 23-11 against the Buccaneers since he initially became the head coach of the New Orleans Saints in 2006.
During Tampa Bay’s decade of darkness from 2010–2019, when the franchise was the laughingstock of the NFL and failed to make a single playoff appearance, Sean Payton couldn’t help but kick the Bucs while they were down. His Saints teams routinely ran up the score on Tampa Bay, and he carried that same energy into the 2020 season.
In Tom Brady’s first game with the Buccaneers, Payton left his starters in and, with 27 seconds remaining and the Saints leading 34–23, went for it on fourth-and-goal instead of letting the clock expire. It came across as a deliberate attempt to send a message and embarrass Tampa Bay.
The Buccaneers ultimately got the last laugh, going into New Orleans and pulling off a victory in Payton’s final playoff game as head coach of the Saints en route to a victory in Super Bowl LV.
Similarly, the Buccaneers had a dog in the fight as the Seahawks took on the Rams. The Rams are one of the most disliked teams among Bucs fans, largely because some of the most painful moments in franchise history have come at their hands.
It started in both the 1979 and 1999 NFC Championship Games, when the Rams beat Tampa Bay on both occasions to prevent the franchise from reaching its first-ever Super Bowl.
In 2021, the Rams delivered another playoff heartbreak. The Buccaneers stormed all the way back from a 27–3 deficit and tied the game, putting themselves on the doorstep of one of the most iconic wins in team history, only for Los Angeles to rip it away with a last-second 30–27 victory on the way to a Super Bowl title.
Even earlier this season, the Rams handed Tampa Bay its most humiliating loss of the year, blowing the Bucs out 34–7 in front of a national audience.
Seattle, on the other hand, has a lot in common with Tampa Bay. The two franchises entered the NFL together as expansion teams in 1976, and like the Buccaneers, the Seahawks are also celebrating their franchise’s 50th season. Even the quarterback situations mirror each other. Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield were taken in the same draft class back in 2018, written off by the teams that drafted them, and even wound up as teammates in Carolina before finally reviving their careers in better situations.
Of course, the Bucs would have much rather been making a playoff run of their own. But from the outside looking in, watching the Rams, a team that has so often stood in Tampa Bay’s way, fall in heartbreaking fashion, while also seeing Sean Payton come up short in his Super Bowl pursuit, is about as satisfying a Championship Weekend as Bucs fans could have asked for, given the circumstances.