{"id":74185,"date":"2025-05-24T00:38:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T00:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/74185\/"},"modified":"2025-05-24T00:38:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T00:38:04","slug":"tampa-bay-buccaneers-getting-an-early-nod-in-2025-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/74185\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Buccaneers getting an early nod in 2025 season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

It appears as though perhaps not everyone is ready to crown the Atlanta Falcons<\/a> as ready to overtake the Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a> as NFC South champions this fall.\u00a0\u00a0At least not in the first part of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Bucs and the Falcons open up the 2025 season against each other in Atlanta.\u00a0 With the 2025 schedule released, some oddsmakers have started posting early game lines for Week One, including FanDuel Sportsbook.\u00a0 They opened with the Bucs as a 1.5-point favorite over the Falcons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Falcons were a popular pick last offseason to unseat Tampa Bay as the division winner.\u00a0 With Kirk Cousins joining the fold to seemingly improve Atlanta’s stagnant passing game and Raheem Morris coming in to give the Falcons a fresh look and new energy, it seemed like a passing of the torch could take place.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the Falcons did their part on the field when they faced off against the Buccaneers last year. Cousins threw for an Atlanta franchise record 509 yards<\/a> as the Falcons rallied in the fourth quarter to force overtime and eventually win 36-30.\u00a0 They took the rematch<\/a> later that month in Tampa 31-26.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, the Falcons’ struggled on both sides of the ball for much of the rest of the season, which resulted in rookie Michael Penix, Jr. getting the nod as the starter late in the year.\u00a0 Conversely, the Bucs did what they’ve done the last two years with Baker Mayfield at the helm – rally in the season’s final two months.\u00a0 Tampa Bay won six of their last seven games to clinch the division with a 27-19 Week 18 win over the New Orleans Saints<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Bucs will be looking to repeat their offensive success without Liam Coen, who accepted the Jaguars’ head coaching job back in January in, let’s say, a very controversial fashion.\u00a0 New Bucs offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard will have all of his team’s 2024 weapons back, and even with a little more firepower this time around with first-round pick Emeka Egbuka on the roster now<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We’ll find out if the Bucs can back up the oddsmakers’ faith in Tampa Bay on September 7, when toe meets leather at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It appears as though perhaps not everyone is ready to crown the Atlanta Falcons as ready to overtake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[223,254,2554,224,7,6,250,14443],"class_list":{"0":"post-74185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-falcons","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-falcons","10":"tag-atlantafalcons","11":"tag-falcons","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","15":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}