With a much-needed bye week looming and the second half of the 2025 season shaping up to be a very crowded race of legitimate NFC contenders, the 5-2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers head to New Orleans for a critical matchup against a division opponent. The Buccaneers will face the 1-6 Saints at the Caesars Superdome on Sunday, with kickoff scheduled for 4:05 p.m. ET, and try to tack on one more win to keep pace in the conference before enjoying their break.

The Saints, whose lone win so far came against the New York Giants in Week Five, are coming off a 26-14 loss at Chicago in Week Seven but still represent a very significant challenge for the current first-place squad in the NFC South.

“It’s a division rival,” said Head Coach Todd Bowles. “All our division games are tough – all the games, period. It’s hard to win in this league. We know it’s a tough place to play. They’ve beaten us before plenty of times [and] we’ve beaten them some, so we’re preparing for a battle.”

The Buccaneers are also coming off a loss, having dropped a 24-9 decision on the road to the Detroit Lions in front of a national audience on Monday night. In this case, the short week may be something of a blessing, as the Bucs are eager to get back on the field and return to the form that drove their league-best 5-1 start.

“[It is a] long season,” said rookie wide receiver Tez Johnson. “We never look at anything like a loss, we always learn from those mistakes that we make in the game. [We] just go back to work and keep pushing. [We] trust the coaches’ gameplan and we go out there and execute as a team.”

The Saints had to make a big offseason adjustment following the unexpected retirement of quarterback Derek Carr, and second-year man Spencer Rattler won a training camp battle with rookie second-rounder Tyler Shough to take the reins. Rattler has shown poise, escapability and downfield accuracy in making that decision look good, throwing for 1,450 yards, eight touchdowns and four interceptions – three of which came in last week’s game in Chicago. The Buccaneers faced Rattler in two of his six starts as a rookie last season, and while both of those games ended in wins for Tampa Bay, Rattler threw for a combined 483 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions.

“He’s definitely moving around the pocket a lot more – he’s running a lot more, using his legs,” said Bowles of the second-year passer. “He has a strong arm. He’s playing good football for them. He’s throwing the deep ball well. He’s connecting with [Chris] Olave and [Rashid] Shaheed very well, and they’ve still got [Alvin] Kamara, so he’s got a lot of weapons around him.”

While Rattler is averaging just 6.2 yards per pass attempts, he has some explosive weapons at his disposal, including the speedy Shaheed and the shifty Kamara. Olave provides consistent production with 44 catches through seven games and is also capable of the big play. While Tampa Bay’s defense has shown signs of being able to shut down any opponent, it has also been susceptible to too many big plays due to various sorts of breakdowns. Fixing that issue will be paramount in the Superdome.

“Easily. It’s been three a game – at least three or four a game – and then they play great defense,” said Bowles. “We’ve talked about that as a group. It’s just one thing, but it can’t be one thing on the defensive side of the ball for you to play great defense. We give up about three plays for 150-plus yards, and the rest of the game you look solid – [it] can’t happen. We’ve got to be better there. They understand that, coaches understand that, and we’ve got to get that fixed.”

The Saints’ defense saw safety Tyrann Mathieu retire in the offseason but still features such proven veterans as linebacker Demario Davis (61 tackles) and defensive ends Cameron Jordan (2.5 sacks) and Carl Granderson (4.5 sacks). It also has a new play-caller, with first-year Head Coach Kellen Moore bringing in former Chargers’ Head Coach Brandon Staley to run that operation. Quarterback Baker Mayfield said the Saints focus on not giving up big plays.

“Personnel-wise, being familiar with them, understanding that, that does give you a little bit of a head start on the preparation,” said Mayfield. “[It is] just understanding the system that Brandon Staley calls and knowing that it is similar to a Vic Fangio-type system. Top-down defense, they do not like to get shots over their head. [I am] looking at it like that, trying to relate it as much as you can, but also looking at specifically what are they doing, and our guys will be able to handle that.

“When you have the linebacker duo of Pete [Werner] and Demario [Davis], that is really where it starts. Being able to communicate based on formation and motions, those guys get everybody going and you definitely have to always know where No. 56 (Davis) is.”

The Buccaneers and Saints have accounted for the last eight NFC South titles and have often had emotionally-charged outings against each other. New Orleans was the first team in division history to win four straight crowns from 2017-20, and the Bucs have followed with the last four. Whether or not Tampa Bay can break that record with a fifth straight division title in 2025 may come down to their two meetings with the Saints, and the first one is on tap this weekend.

GAME AND BROADCAST DETAILS

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5-2) at New Orleans Saints (1-6)

Sunday, October 26, 4:05 p.m. ET

Caesars Superdome (capacity: 73,000)

TV Broadcast Team: Kenny Albert (play-by-play), Jonathan Vilma (analyst), Megan Olivi (reporter)

Radio: 98Rock (WXTB, 97.9 FM), Flagship Station

Radio Broadcast Team: Gene Deckerhoff (play-by-play), Dave Moore (analyst), T.J. Rives (reporter)

Spanish Radio: 96.1 Caliente

Spanish Radio Broadcast Team: Carlos Bohorquez (play-by-play), Martin Gramática (analyst), Santiago Gramática (reporter)

ALL-TIME HEAD-TO-HEAD SERIES

The Buccaneers and Saints were frequent opponents in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s when the NFL’s annual game schedule was heavily influenced by the previous year’s standings. They became even better acquainted when the league changed its scheduling format to a divisional rotation in 2002, after a 32nd team was added and the NFL realigned into eight four-team divisions. The Buccaneers left their old NFC Central haunt that year to join the new NFC South, which also drew in the Saints, Panthers and Falcons. That meant two games against the Saints every year, of course.

New Orleans leads the all-time series with Tampa Bay, 40-26 but the Buccaneers have won five of the last six meetings, including both games last year. The first of those was a 51-27 blowout in the Superdome in Week Six of this season. The Buccaneers rushed out to a quick 17-0 lead in the first quarter, keyed by Antoine Winfield Jr.’s 58-yard fumble return for a touchdown, but a rash of turnovers by the offense in the second quarter allowed the Saints to storm back for a 27-24 halftime lead. However, the Bucs scored all 27 of the game’s second-half points while amassing a franchise single-game record with 594 yards of offense. Running back Sean Tucker won NFC Offensive Player of the Week honors for his 192 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns in the game.

In the final week of the 2024 regular season, the Saints came to Raymond James Stadium with the Bucs needing a win to clinch a fourth straight NFC South title and rushed out to a 16-6 halftime lead over the home team. However, Baker Mayfield threw second-half touchdown passes to Payne Durham and Jalen McMillan and Bucky Irving iced the 27-19 decision with an 11-yard touchdown run in the final two minutes. The Buccaneers’ defense famously got one more defensive stop to prevent a game-tying touchdown and two-point conversion and give the ball back to the offense so Mike Evans could catch one more nine-yard pass and surpass 1,000 receiving yards for the 11th season in a row.

The Bucs also won in New Orleans in 2023, taking a 26-9 decision in the Superdome in Week Four. Mayfield threw touchdown passes to Deven Thompkins, Trey Palmer and Cade Otton and the Bucs’ defense held the Saints to 197 total yards of offense. Winfield had another big game, combining a team-high nine tackles with a sack, two tackles for loss, a pass defensed, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery.

The Buccaneers won five of their last six regular season games in 2023, but the exception was a rematch with the Saints in Tampa in Week 17. New Orleans got the split and kept the Bucs from clinching the division title (for one more week), racing out to a 20-0 lead before finishing off a 23-13 victory. Quarterback Derek Carr threw touchdown passes to tight ends Juwan Johnson and Taysom Hill and the Saints’ defense picked Mayfield off twice.

The Buccaneers own the win in the only postseason meeting between the two teams, as they defeated the Saints in the Divisional Round in 2020 by a 30-20 score in the Superdome on the way to the Super Bowl LV championship. That proved to be the final game in Drew Brees’s illustrious career, as he retired a few months later. Sean Murphy-Bunting, Mike Edwards and Devin White all picked Brees off as the Bucs rallied from a seven-point deficit in the second half to get the win, scoring the game’s final 17 points.

In 2022, the Bucs got their first season sweep of their division rival since 2007. Before that, the Saints had won seven in a row in the head-to-head battle (not counting the 2020 postseason game) dating back to 2018. Tampa Bay won in the Superdome in Week Two in 2022, taking a 20-10 decision that was actually still a 3-3 tie going into the fourth quarter. The Bucs’ defense generated five turnovers in the last 17 minutes of game play, including a pick-six by safety Mike Edwards. In the Week 13 rematch in Tampa, on the Monday Night Football stage, the Bucs rallied for two fourth-quarter touchdowns to eke out a 17-16 victory. Tom Brady led 91 and 63-yard touchdown drives in the last five minutes of the game, ending the first with a one-yard touchdown pass to Otton and the second with a six-yard scoring connection with Rachaad White with three seconds left in the game.

During their long winning streak in the series, New Orleans scored at least 28 points in five of those seven games, including a 36-27 decision in New Orleans on Halloween last year. The exception was a 9-0 blanking the Saints delivered at Raymond James Stadium last December, marking just the second shutout for either team in the series and the first since a 41-0 win by New Orleans in 2012. The roughest game for the Buccaneers in that stretch came on a Sunday night in November of 2020 at Raymond James Stadium, with the Saints rolling to a 38-3 decision that was easily Tampa Bay’s worst game on its way to that Super Bowl title.

The Bucs-Saints series was first contested in 1977. That initial meeting is famously the first win in franchise history for the Buccaneers, who left New Orleans on December 11 of that year with a 33-14 victory that snapped a franchise-opening 26-game losing streak. The Bucs still had a 3-2 edge in the series by the end of 1982, which would also prove to be the end of the franchise’s first run of playoff seasons. The Saints took control of the series by winning six straight in the mid-’80s.

Since they became division mates, the Bucs and Saints have squared off 45 times, 27 of them going in favor of New Orleans. The two teams had a run of season splits from 2015-18, and it wasn’t just a matter of the each club holding serve on home field advantage. The Buccaneers actually won at New Orleans in 2015 and 2018, as noted above. That 2018 game was a 48-40 decision that set an NFL record for most combined points in a Week One contest.

Weirdly, the Saints beat Tampa Bay twice in that first NFC South season in 2002, even though the Buccaneers would win the 2002 division title on their way to victory in Super Bowl XXXVII. Those two games represented half of the Bucs’ losses that year. In a minor bit of payback, a 2-12 Bucs team beat a 13-1 Saints team in the penultimate week of the 2009 season, before the Saints would go on to win their first Super Bowl. The Saints also won both games in 2020 in the regular season, in another Buccaneers championship campaign.

NOTABLE CONNECTIONS

Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who is in his first season with the Buccaneers, played the 2018 and 2019 seasons in New Orleans as a backup to Drew Brees. Bridgewater got into 14 games and logged six starts in that span, and in 2019 he kept the Saints on track to win the NFC South title by winning all five of his starts while Brees was out with an injury.
Buccaneers Senior Advisor to the General Manager Bruce Arians got his first NFL coaching job in Kansas City from 1989-92 but then returned to the college ranks in 1993. His second crack at the NFL would come in New Orleans, where he was the tight ends coach under Head Coach Jim Mora in 1996.
Kevin Carberry, the Buccaneers’ Run Game Coordinator/Offensive Line Coach, came to Tampa from New Orleans, where he was the assistant offensive line coach in 2023.
Among the many coaching stops for Buccaneers Assistant Coach Tom Moore over more than four decades in the NFL was one season as the Saints’ running backs coach in 1997.
Fred McAfee, the Saints’ vice president of player engagement, played 16 years in the NFL as a running back and that included a very brief stop with the Buccaneers in 1999. McAfee appeared in one game for Tampa Bay that season.
Saints Special Teams Coach Phil Galiano was an assistant special teams coach in Tampa under Head Coach Greg Schiano in 2012-13.
Saints wide receiver Trey Palmer, who is currently on injured reserve, began his NFL career as a sixth-round draft pick by the Buccaneers in 2023. Palmer played two seasons in Tampa and recorded 51 catches for 557 yards and four touchdowns before being waived in the final roster cutdown this August and claimed off waivers by the Saints.