The Buccaneers Won the Turnover Battle and, Finally, a Game

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost the first quarter of this NFL season.

Coach Todd Bowles knows it, and so does everyone else.

And, truth be told, it might already be too late for the Bucs to build a playoff team.

Only one team in league history (the 1992 San Diego Chargers) has made it to the postseason after starting 0-4. For the Buccaneers to become the second, they'll have to play at least another week without their starting quarterback, Baker Mayfield, and best defensive player, Antoine Winfield Jr. But whether the Bucs are dead or not, they're going to keep fighting. They showed that Thursday night in Dallas.

Tampa ensured it wouldn't go 0-18 by gutting out a 24-16 win in Jerry World.

The Bucs won by running the football, with Bucky Irving having a career-high 165 yards on 21 carries and a touchdown.

They also won with Bowles' bread and butter: defense.

Despite playing with a rookie undrafted free agent QB in just his second start, the Bucs never turned the ball over.

On the other side of the ball, Tampa forced three turnovers, with the last one, an interception by linebacker Alex Anzalone, putting the game on ice.

"If you can win the turnover battle," Bowles said in his postgame press conference. “You can win a lot of ball games."

It’s hard to argue with that logic.

In Tampa Bay’s season opener against the Bengals in Cincinnati, the Bucs turned the ball over four times and generated just one.

The Bucs lost that game.

The next week, the Bucs only turned it over once against the Cleveland Browns, but generated none themselves.

The Bucs lost again.

The Bucs did get a turnover in Week 3 against the Minnesota Vikings, but lost two and lost the game.

This past Sunday against the Green Bay Packers, each team turned it over twice.

But Green Bay scored 10 of its 17 points off of Tampa's two turnovers, and the Bucs couldn't get anything off of Green Bay's.

Therefore, the team started 0-4.

But Bowles pointed out that the Bucs still have three quarters of the season to go.

"We got one win," he said. "We got to get three more to go to try to even this thing up. It's a long way to climb out, but at the same time, we're upbeat."

Tampa's next three games are against the Pittsburgh Steelers at home, on the road against the Carolina Panthers and at home against the Atlanta Falcons.

Although all three teams have a better record than the Bucs, none of them are above .500, so as of now, all three of those games are winnable.

"If we play this hard and play this effectively," Bowles said, "We will be okay.”