At times Sunday, it resembled a game of Madden football with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks scoring seemingly at will inside Lumen Stadium. One stretch featured an incredible seven touchdowns in a row , with quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold, both castoffs from the Carolina Panthers, like two kids playing streetball.

The showdown between evenly matched division leaders seemed destined to be decided by whichever team had the ball last, or perhaps which way it bounced at the end. Fortunately for the Bucs, with less than a minute to play, a pass deflected off the helmet of Tampa Bay defensive lineman Logan Hall and hung above the ground with the outcome in the balance.

And on a day when the Bucs defense couldn’t stem the Seattle offensive tide, their other D – as in ageless linebacker Lavonte David – did just that. 

Old No. 54 flipped the script with a diving interception with 58 seconds to play, ending what looked like a certain Seahawks game-winning drive and setting up a heart-pounding 38-35 victory on a 39-yard Chase McLaughlin field goal as time expired. 

“It’s great to get a win. We didn’t play as well on defense, but it’s a team game, (and) they made plays when they had to,” said Bucs head coach Todd Bowles.

As for David, Bowles was effusive. “He’s our leader, our playmaker, our captain, especially on the defensive side of the football. He walks the walk. He talks the talk. He has all the stats to prove it, and he still has the desire to play the game the right away.”

So much happened before David’s heroics helped lift the Bucs to a 4-1 record with their fourth cardiac comeback of the season. (For the record, Tampa Bay is the first NFL team to win four games by three or fewer points in their first five outings of the season.

This was a game that had trouble written all over it for the Bucs – a cross-continental flight for a banged up team missing two star offensive playmakers, various key members of the offensive and defensive lines, and a pair of starting cornerbacks. Yet on this potentially difficult trip to the Great Northwest against a talented Seahawks team, the Bucs exhibited no shortage of greatness themselves.

Mayfield at one point completed 12 straight passes before finishing with an off-the-charts 29-of -33 for 379 yards, two touchdowns, and a quarterback rating of 134.7. 

In fact, Mayfield became the first quarterback in NFL history to pass for 375-plus yards with fewer than five incompletions in a regular-season game. He’s one of only four players since the 1970 merger with 375-plus passing yards and a completion percentage above 85 percent in the same game (joining Tom Brady, Lamar Jackson and Justin Herbert). And this marked the first NFL game ever in which opposing quarterbacks each recorded 325-plus passing yards and completed over 80 percent of their passes.

Rookie sensation wide receive Emeka Egbuka, fresh off his NFL Offensive Rookie of the Month Award, continued to step up in the absence of injured All-Pro Mike Evans, catching seven passes for 163 yards (including a long of 57) and his fifth touchdown in five games. What’s more, he is the first player in NFL history with 25-plus receptions, 400-plus receiving yards, and five or more receiving touchdowns in his first five career games.

Rachaad White, filling in for injured starting tailback Bucky Irving, had two rushing touchdowns – and a heads-up first-down run as the clock wound down to set up the winning field goal and prevent Seattle from getting the ball back.

The offense that has struggled with slow starts took an early 13-0 lead — important against a Seahawks team tied for third in the NFL with 35 first-quarter points in 2025. 

“We talked about it offensively that we haven’t done a good enough job of starting fast, and that’s really based on the mentality,” Mayfield said. “It starts with me taking completions, taking some things that are there, and going from there. But our guys just never flinched, even when the score was going back and forth. We understand we still had time on the clock, and still had a chance.”

It was ultimately Mayfield who was at his best with the contest on the line, moments after Darnold gave the Seahawks a 35-28 lead on a 21-yard touchdown pass to Tory Horton with 3:18 to play. And give Darnold his due – for most of the game, he was as dead-on and relentless as his counterpart, completing 28 of 34 passes for 341 yards, four touchdowns, a QB rating of 135.4 – spoiled only by that interception at the end.

With the lead, the momentum and a cacophonous home crowd cheering them on, it seemed as if Seattle had finally delivered the knockout blow. But Mayfield and Egbuka went to work right away with a 25-yard hookup, followed two plays later by another 25-yard connection to tight end Cade Otton, who had a big day himself with four catches for 81 yards. 

That gave the Bucs a first and 10 at Seattle’s 20 with two minutes to play. And after a nine-yard completion to Egbuka, Mayfield bought time and then lofted a perfect, 11-yard scoring throw to veteran wideout Sterling Shepard to help pull the Bucs back into a tie with 1:08 remaining.

“It was huge to tie the ballgame,” said Bowles. "We knew they were going to have some time left right there. We thought about going for two, but we kicked (the extra point), and our leader Lavonte made a helluva play to get that interception and get us the ball back.”

The pattern in this game was already entrenched. Seattle had no trouble moving the ball against Tampa Bay’s defense – aided by the huge game of Egbuka’s former Ohio State teammate, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who caught eight passes for 132 yards and a touchdown, and the punishing running of tailbacks Kenneth Walker (10 carries for 86 yards) and Zach Charbonnet (nine for 36 and a TD). The Seahawks had more than a minute to march down the field, run down the clock, and win it with either a touchdown or field goal.

So that was the scene: Darnold started from his 23, and this was a noteworthy occurrence because the Bucs’ kick coverage on special teams had up to that point been anything but special. But here came Darnold, starting with a nine-yard completion to veteran playmaker Cooper Kupp to the Seahawk 32.

On second down, Darnold once again dropped back to pass, but Tampa Bay safety Antoine Winfield blitzed and forced the quarterback to hurry his throw to Kupp over the middle – and it glanced off Hall’s helmet, changing course right in David’s direction.

Flashback to Week 2 in Houston. A short pass over the middle from Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud wound up hitting David right in the chest and hands, but he was unable to hold on and help put the game away. This time, David made the pick, managing to stay on his feet for three yards, and giving the Bucs a first down at the Seattle 38.

“At times you just have to lock in,” David said. “There was a certain blitz that was called and me and my boy (linebacker SirVocea Dennis) communicated on it. He took the blitz and I was the one who had to be in coverage. And the way the formation was I knew what was going to happen – an 'outbreaker' route or a route inside. So I was there to read the quarterback and make the play.”

 White carried twice for 3 yards and no gain, leaving the Bucs with a third and 7 with 45 seconds to play – still enough time for Seattle to counter with a quick field goal if they regained possession. But offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard called White’s number again, a run around the right end, and he broke free for 12 yards to Seattle’s 32.  White sensed he could have gained more, even scored, but he wisely hit the ground to keep the clock running. 

“Enormous play, unbelievable,” Mayfield said, “… a helluva job by Rachaad of extending the play and then also having the mental wherewithal in that situation to go down in bounds to make them burn timeouts. It’s a great job by him. 

One play later, McLaughlin, battling a case of the flu, banged through the game-winner, his third field goal in three attempts, giving the Bucs their third road win of the season and a much-needed rebound after the loss to Philadelphia last week.

“It’s a huge character win,” Bowles said. 

To Mayfield, the victory sent a different kind of message: “We’re tough as hell. That’s what it says about us. And I love this group. That’s about it.”