Buccaneers 2025 Season in Review

Baker Mayfield threw 26 touchdown passes this year — seventh-most in the entire NFL. And the Buccaneers still missed the playoffs. Here's how a top-ten touchdown quarterback ended up on an 8-and-9 team, why the rookie receiver might be the real story of Tampa's offense, and the one defensive number that actually held up when almost nothing else did. Eight and nine. Out of the playoffs, fourth in line among the NFC teams left on the outside. The Buccaneers didn't get smashed and they didn't get muffed — they got the most frustrating thing of all: stuck right in the middle.

Let's start with the team by the numbers, because the headline is mediocrity dressed up in a few elite outfits. Offensive expected points added — the catch-all measure of how much each play added to Tampa's scoring chances — landed at minus 9.5 for the year, twentieth in the league. Defensively, expected points added allowed came in at plus 13.2, seventeenth. Both sides of the ball, just south of average. But the variance was loud. This team opened 6-and-2, then went 2-and-7 the rest of the way. They scored 38 in Seattle in Week 5 and 7 against the Rams in Week 12. They beat the Saints by 20 in Week 8 and lost by 27 to the Rams a month later. Boom-or-bust, with the boom up front and the bust everywhere after Halloween.

Now let's talk about the passing offense, and this is where you really feel the story. Tampa's total passing expected points added — the cumulative scoring value of every dropback — was minus 16 on 602 attempts. Twenty-second in the league. Mayfield threw for 3,693 yards and those 26 touchdowns, but his completion percentage was 63.2 against an expected 64.8 — so completion percentage over expected sits at minus 1.6, twenty-fourth among qualified starters. He took 36 sacks. Feast or famine: explosive plays were a real weapon, with 64 twenty-plus-yard gains on the season, top-ten territory — but the floor was rough. And here's the real evidence: the rookie, Emeka Egbuka, led this team in receiving with 63 catches for 938 yards and 6 touchdowns. He was the most reliable target on the roster from Week 1. When your rookie second receiver becomes your number one because Mike Evans only plays 8 games and Chris Godwin only plays 9, you've got a passing game built on duct tape — even when the box score looks fine.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense, because this is the one place the numbers actually liked Tampa. Rushing expected points added came in at plus 0.8 on 474 carries — tenth in the league, seventy-second percentile. 4.1 yards a carry, 114.5 yards a game. Solid, not spectacular. Here's the catch: the lead back, Bucky Irving, posted rushing yards over expected of minus 126 on the season — minus 0.7 per attempt, 49th among qualified runners. Rough. 10 games, 173 carries, 588 yards, 3.4 a pop — the line and the back weren't pulling the same direction. The committee was steady — no game where the run vanished entirely — but it never took over a game on the ground either. Floor over ceiling, all season long.

Next up, the pass defense, and this is the unit that quietly carried more weight than people noticed. Total takeaways on the season: 22, with 13 interceptions and 9 fumble recoveries — seventh in the league, eighty-first percentile. Elite ball-hawking. But passing expected points added allowed was plus 41.1 — and on defense you want that number negative, so plus 41 is bad — landing them at the forty-first percentile in pass defense. 30 passing touchdowns allowed. 254.8 passing yards a game given up. A defense that bent and bent and bent, then ripped the ball away at exactly the right moment. Antoine Winfield Jr. had the signature moment in the Week 13 win over Arizona, jumping a Jacoby Brissett throw inside the Cardinals' red zone for an interception that flipped a scoreless game. That's the identity — not a shutdown unit, but an opportunistic one.

And the run defense — this is the genuinely elite piece of the roster. Rushing expected points added allowed: minus 27.9, which on defense is fantastic, ninety-first percentile in the league. Ninety-first. Only 99.6 rushing yards allowed per game on 386 carries. Opponents got 16 rushing touchdowns, but the per-play math was brutal — minus 0.07 expected points added per carry allowed. The most consistent unit on the roster from Week 1 through Week 18 — steady floor, week in and week out. Vita Vea and the interior were immovable. If you were going to beat the Buccaneers in 2025, you were doing it through the air, because you were not running on this front.