# Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2026 Coverage Report: 25 of 27 Division-Winner Calls Scored Zero

*Published 2026-09-09 — MissedTakes*

Across all 32 clubs our database holds 20,520 takes, 7,938 of them graded. That averages out to roughly 641 takes and 248 graded per team.

Tampa Bay has 492 takes, 202 graded. That is 26th of 32 in raw volume — ahead of only the Steelers (488), Cardinals (466), Titans (457), Panthers (448), Colts (388) and Falcons (351) — and about 77% of the league-average take count. The Bills, at 1,050, drew more than twice as much attention.

![Buccaneers coverage, in context](/posts/visuals/ba3789d5-dc32-4379-99cf-60da71d6f26a.png)

That is a lighter footprint than the club's results merit. Tampa Bay went 8-9 in 2025 and missed the playoffs, but they had made the postseason in each of the four seasons before that (10-7, 9-8, 8-9, 13-4) and won the title in 2020. This is not a team nobody has a reason to talk about; it is a team our tracked sources talked about at roughly three-quarters of the league rate.

Where the Bucs do stand out is in how badly the talk graded. Average accuracy on their 202 graded takes is **37.8** — third-lowest in the league, behind only the Ravens (30.4) and Lions (36.2), and a long way from Seattle's 74.9 or Carolina's 73.6. Average skill delta is +8.99, which is middling: positive, but well behind the Patriots (+45.32) or Seahawks (+56.45).

## The cutdown: nothing to grade

The news hook for this series is the 53-man cutdown, and here Tampa Bay is essentially a blank. Our database holds **four** roster-spot predictions attached to the Buccaneers, all published between August 24 and August 28, 2026, and **none of them has been graded yet**. For scale: 1,153 roster-spot calls were graded league-wide in the last seven days alone.

The four, for the record:

- **River Wells**, Aug. 28: "they very likely could carry three quarterbacks, meaning that both Daniels and Browning are on the active roster" — two separate calls, on [Jayden Daniels](/nfl/players/jayden-daniels) and [Jake Browning](/nfl/players/jake-browning).
- **Matt Matera**, Aug. 28: Tampa may cut short-yardage back Sean Tucker in favor of [Josh Williams](/nfl/players/josh-williams).
- **Caleb Skinner**, Aug. 24: the Bucs "may have to take a different approach this go-around and keep three" quarterbacks to avoid losing [Jalon Daniels](/nfl/players/jalon-daniels) on waivers.

None of those three has a pundit page on the site. So there is no graded cutdown story here — no consensus survivor who got released, no bubble player the field wrote off who stuck. There is a quarterback-room question three writers noticed and nobody in our tracked national sample touched. That is the honest version, and it is short.

## What is actually graded: the division call that never came due

Sixteen claim types carry at least one grade on Tampa Bay. Two dominate: **Game Outcome Picks** (43 graded, 49.6 accuracy) and **Mock Draft Picks** (38 graded, 57.4 accuracy, +36.62 skill). Then comes the type that defines the team's record.

**Division Winners: 27 graded, 7.4 average accuracy.** Twenty-five of those 27 calls scored a flat **0**. Every one of the 25 picked Tampa Bay to win the 2025 NFC South. They did not. The two that scored 100 were both [Marcus Mosher](/pundits/marcus-mosher) power-rankings notes from the 2024 season, when the Bucs did win it.

The 2025 chorus was long and it did not break. [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd) in May: "I'm gonna move Tampa from second to first to win their division." [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen) in August: "I I I think the Bucks are are the the class of that division." [Richard Sherman](/pundits/richard-sherman): "the Butts are gonna win the South. That's the way it's been, and I expect them to only be stronger this year." [Brady Quinn](/pundits/brady-quinn) had them as the NFC's No. 1 overall seed at 12-5. As late as December 12, with the season nearly over, [Gregg Rosenthal](/pundits/gregg-rosenthal) still had them "my favorite in the NFC style barely over the Panthers."

The cruel part, per the [scoring methodology](/methodology): the naive baseline for a division pick is last season's winner, which was Tampa Bay. So every one of those calls carried a skill delta of exactly 0 — even Mosher's two correct ones. Picking the Bucs to win the NFC South was never an edge. It was just the default, and in 2025 the default was wrong.

![Buccaneers accuracy by claim type](/posts/visuals/72782274-5ebe-425e-829e-8e45aa83b481.png)

The rest of the board is consistent with that. **Playoff Picks:** 23 graded, 21.7 accuracy. **Award Picks:** 16 graded, average accuracy **0.0** — not one Buccaneer award pick in our database has hit. **Season Win Totals:** 12 graded, 43.3 accuracy and a skill delta of **-64.5**, the worst of any Tampa Bay claim type.

That win-total number is earned. Tampa Bay won 8 games in 2025. All ten tracked win-total calls on the team were higher than that, averaging 10.8.

![Every tracked 2025 win-total call on Tampa Bay was too high](/posts/visuals/58a5e6af-94d5-4b30-a4ae-9dd189351033.png)

## Who has a named record here

Twelve pundits clear a five-graded-take floor on Tampa Bay. That is a thin bar and these are thin samples, so treat the ordering as description, not ranking.

| Pundit | Graded | Accuracy | Skill |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) | 31 | 35.9 | +3.76 |
| Rich Eisen | 16 | 18.7 | -10.12 |
| Chris Brockman | 13 | 9.0 | -19.54 |
| Gregg Rosenthal | 11 | 33.4 | -9.71 |
| Colin Cowherd | 11 | 20.1 | +29.65 |
| Kyle Crabbs | 8 | 36.6 | +36.40 |
| Marcus Mosher | 8 | 97.5 | +38.33 |
| [Pat Fitzmaurice](/pundits/pat-fitzmaurice) | 7 | 39.3 | -37.71 |
| Brady Quinn | 7 | 2.9 | -15.71 |
| Jonas Knox | 6 | 16.7 | -47.33 |
| [Jamie Erdahl](/pundits/jamie-erdahl) | 6 | 16.7 | +33.33 |
| Cynthia Frelund | 5 | 73.3 | +32.20 |

By outlet, [The Herd with Colin Cowherd](/outlets) carries the most Buccaneers volume in our set (100 takes, 63 graded, 32.1 accuracy). The 33rd Team has the best accuracy among outlets with five or more graded (60.6 on 21).

## The one thing nobody saw

Tampa Bay took Miami edge **Rueben Bain Jr.** at No. 15 in the 2026 draft. Our database holds 20 graded mock-draft calls at Tampa's pick in the sample we pulled, naming Kenyon Sadiq, Keldric Faulk, Cashius Howell, Akheem Mesidor, Kadyn Proctor, Olaivavega Ioane, Emmanuel McNeil-Warren and Cashius Howell again.

[Bain](/nfl/players/rueben-bain) himself draws 67 mock-draft takes in our data, 59 of them graded — attached to New Orleans 14 times, Kansas City 11, Miami 12, Washington 7 — and not once to the team that drafted him. He is now the subject of a stack of ungraded 2026 award and stat calls: [Bucky Brooks](/pundits/bucky-brooks), [Lance Zierlein](/pundits/lance-zierlein), [Eric Williams](/pundits/eric-williams) and [Andy Furman](/pundits/andy-furman) all have him as a Defensive Rookie of the Year pick, and an unsigned CBS bold-predictions piece has him at 15.0 sacks. Those grade later. Given how the last cycle of Buccaneers consensus went, they are worth bookmarking.