Tampa Bay Buccaneers won their Wild Card game against the Washington Football Team 31-23 on Saturday night, taking a step closer to the ultimate goal of playing the Super Bowl LV at their own home at Raymond James Stadium. With the Los Angeles Rams also winning on Sunday, the Buccaneers may actually be back in their field sooner than expected.
The Buccaneers, sown in fifth place in the playoff field of seven NFC teams, eliminated the fourth seed on Saturday night. Meanwhile, the sixth-ranked Rams defeated the Seattle Seahawks, with the third, by 30-20, early Saturday night. That leaves only one game remaining in the NFC Wild Card round, as the Chicago Bears play at the New Orleans Saints on Sunday afternoon. The kickoff is scheduled for 4:40 pm ET.
This is the seventh and second seed clash, and its outcome will determine whether the Buccaneers’ Divisional Round match will take place in New Orleans or Tampa Bay. The latter would be an unprecedented result in the history of the NFL playoffs.
If the Saints’ favorites win on Sunday, it will make Rams the smallest remaining seed in the NFC and send them to Lambeau Field in the next round to face the Packers, who had the only goodbye in the first round of the conference as the best seed. The Buccaneers would then return to the Superdome to face Santos for the third time this season.
If the Bears disturbed the Saints in the Superdome and completed a sweep by the NFC Wild Card teams, the Bucs would, surprisingly, be coming home for the Divisional Round. They would host Rams with the sixth division, while the Bears with the seventh classification would go to Green Bay. This is how the Buccaneers would make league history.
In the previous NFL playoff format, with two teams in each conference getting a goodbye in the first round, it was not possible for a fifth or sixth seed to play at home in the Divisional Playoff Round. The only way a fifth seed could host a playoff game would be if the two Wild Card teams won each in the first two rounds, establishing a home game in the Conference Championship Game for the fifth seed against the sixth seed. This never happened. The team with the lowest ranking of all time to host a playoff game was the Arizona Cardinals in 2008. Arizona, the champions of the NFC West, had the fourth seed, won a game of the opening round at home and a game of the divisional round on the road before hosting the NFC Championship game against the Philadelphia Eagles, sixth. Arizona won the game and advanced to Super Bowl XLIII, which coincidentally took place at Raymond James Stadium.
Any result on Sunday will create a rematch for the Buccaneers and a chance for revenge on a bigger stage. A trip to New Orleans would be another game between the top two teams from NFC South, as the Saints won the division with a 12-4 record and the Buccaneers were behind with 11-5. However, two of Tampa Bay’s five defeats went to the Saints, who won in New Orleans at Week One, 34-23, and again in Tampa at Week Nine, 38-3. The Buccaneers and Saints have never met in the postseason before.
A home game against Rams would not only be a rematch for Los Angeles’ 27-24 victory at Raymond James Stadium in Week 11, but would also mark the third time the two teams met in the playoffs. The previous two were conference championship games, with the Rams winning in Tampa in 1979, 9-0, and in St. Louis in 2002, 11-6. The last game was a famous confrontation between the Buccaneers ‘defense and Rams’ offensive Greatest Show on Turf, and Tampa Bay maintained a 6-5 lead until the end of the fourth period.