Tampa Bay Buccaneers

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.

Welcome into Muffed, draft-class edition — Tampa Bay on the clock. Seven picks across three days, and the headliner is the one the scouting staff erupted over: Rueben Bain Jr., the Miami edge, off the board at fifteen. The theme isn't subtle. The Bucs got bigger, meaner, and younger on defense — a pass-rusher and a Mike linebacker both twenty-one years old, and a nickel corner who plays like he's mad at the football. They sprinkled in two pass-catchers and a guard, but make no mistake: this was a defense-first reset. Rob McCartney said as much — he wants to dictate down-and-distance and set up more third-and-longs.

Start with the pass defense, because that's where the math screamed. In 2025, Tampa bled plus forty-one expected points added through the air — opposing passing games worth forty-one expected points ABOVE average against this group — and surrendered thirty passing touchdowns. Enter Bain at fifteen: nine and a half sacks at Miami (third in the ACC, fifteenth nationally) and fifteen and a half tackles for loss, also fifteenth in the country. McCartney was emphatic — Bain isn't a designated rusher, he's a three-down end who doesn't like coming off the field, and the run physicality against tight ends is part of the package. Then at pick one-sixteen, Keionte Scott, the Miami corner with a Relative Athletic Score of 9.78 — and quick aside, Relative Athletic Score is a zero-to-ten grade comparing a prospect's combine and pro-day testing to every player at his position since 1987. Scott is in the top three percent of corners ever tested. Thirteen tackles for loss, eighth in his conference. McCartney was crystal clear: downhill, attacking nickel — a blitzer, a run-fitter, a screen-killer — with some internal chatter about safety reps too.

Run defense got the second-round check, and it ties directly to McCartney's stop-the-run-to-rush-the-passer gospel. Pick forty-six: Josiah Trotter, the Missouri linebacker, twenty-one years old — eighty-four tackles, thirteen tackles for loss, two sacks. McCartney flat-out said pairing a young edge with a young Mike will define this defense's identity for the next five-to-ten years. That's a long-runway bet on two cornerstones at the two most important defensive positions. Then at one-fifty-five, DeMonte Capehart, the Clemson defensive tackle — and the athletic profile gets loud. Relative Athletic Score of 9.96. Top one percent of defensive tackles ever measured. Production was modest — twenty tackles, two and a half for loss, one sack — and McCartney admitted the tape hasn't caught the testing yet, but he called Capehart's pure power and knockback some of the best in the draft. Tampa's run defense was already a strength in 2025 at minus twenty-eight expected points added on the ground. They're doubling down.

Flip to the passing offense, where Tampa lived in the red — minus sixteen expected points added through the air in 2025, below-average production. The answer at pick eighty-four: Ted Hurst, the Georgia State receiver who smashed the Sun Belt. Seventy-one catches, one thousand four yards, six touchdowns, a long of seventy — fifth in the conference in yards, fourth in scores. His per-play predicted points added — the college equivalent of NFL expected points added — was plus zero point four six, totaling plus forty-nine point six eight on the season. That's elite efficiency. Pair it with a Relative Athletic Score of 9.91 — top one percent of receivers tested — and you've got a small-school producer with first-round traits. McCartney sees him outside, though he noted this offense doesn't really have a true X. Then at one-eighty-five, Tampa traded up for Bauer Sharp, the LSU tight end. A converted quarterback, only three years at the position, Relative Athletic Score of 9.12, and McCartney called his combine workout one of the best in the entire group.

Up front, Tampa surrendered thirty-eight sacks in 2025 — depth and toughness was a real need. Enter Billy Schrauth at pick one-sixty, the Notre Dame guard. McCartney leaned hard into character — Schrauth was a Notre Dame captain who played through a knee injury against USC because, in his words, there was no option. McCartney said the way he plays is what we desire to be. Guard first, with center cross-training possible down the road.

Pick of the draft. You can argue Trotter — the twenty-one-year-old Mike to pair with the edge. But the pick is Bain, and here's the angle: pass-rusher is the single hardest position in football to acquire, and Tampa got one who plays the run at a high level. The league is full of designated rushers hidden on early downs. Bain is not that. He's a complete defensive end at twenty-one on a five-year rookie deal — and McCartney's draft room erupted out of a back room and ran down the hall when the card went in. That's the tell.

The biggest thing to watch in 2026: can this defense translate the size-and-edge mandate into a top-ten unit? Tampa spent four of seven picks on that side, paired them with veteran free agents, and the front office is openly saying the goal is to set up more third-and-longs so the pass rush eats. That's the stress test. If Bain and Trotter become the identity at twenty-one, this class ages into a foundation. If Capehart's testing never meets his tape and the boundary corner room stays thin, the bet looks shakier.