GM Jason Licht believes Buccaneers' 2026 season will mirror their strong 6-2 start, not their late-season collapse.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a tale of two seasons in 2025.
The first eight games were, mostly, great,
The last nine games were, mostly, terrible.
Tampa Bay was one of the best teams in football through eight games, starting out 6-2.
Quarterback Baker Mayfield was playing like an MVP candidate, throwing for 13 touchdowns compared to just two interceptions.
With a manageable second half second that featured six of nine games against teams with losing records, the Bucs were, at minimum, expected to win their fifth straight NFC South championships.
Then, everything imploded.
A combination of bad luck (injuries) and bad execution (losing a two-touchdown fourth quarter lead to the Atlanta Falcons at home on Thursday Night Football) led to Tampa losing seven of its last nine games.
They would end up finishing 8-9 and conceding the NFC South to the Carolina Panthers on the last day of the regular season.
The 2026 Buccaneers will look different.
Mike Evans (free agency) and Lavonte David (retirement) played a combined 26 seasons with the Bucs, and now will be moving on.
There are also players coming into Tampa Bay, such as RB Kenneth Gainwell, LB Alex Anzalone and DL A’Shawn Robinson.
Although the faces are different, Bucs general manager Jason Licht told Buccaneers.com in an exclusive interview Wednesday that he feels the product in 2026 will be similar to what fans saw in the first half of 2025.
“We feel like we’re still the same team that started off the year 6-2, 5-1, really — 6-2 at the bye week,” Licht said. “It was a great bye week. But we just had some unfortunate injuries. You know a lot of things led to it; you never want to use that as an excuse.”
Part of the “injuries” that Licht referred to took place along the offensive line.
Because of a variety of injuries, including one to franchise cornerstone Tristian Wirfs, the Bucs had to use a total of nine line combinations in 2025.
Licht said at the NFL Combine last month that he feels Tampa’s offensive line is one of the NFL’s best when healthy, and doubled down on that in his latest interview.
The GM also mentioned RB Bucky Irving, who missed seven games last season due to an injury, and even when he was healthy enough to play, was dealing with a shoulder that eventually required surgery.
A lot of what the Bucs do in 2026 depends on the offense, which finished 16th in scoring in 2026.
The Bucs fired OC Josh Grizzard after the season and replaced him with Zac Robinson, who had been the Atlanta Falcons’ OC for the previous two seasons.
Licht feels Tampa’s offense could be one of the best in the league, which is where it was not too long ago.
In 2024, Tampa’s offense finished fourth in the league in scoring and made it to the playoffs.
If Tampa is to make good on Licht’s words and make it back to the playoffs, it will need production closer to 2024 than 2025.
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