Orange and pewter against the stripes, a Bucs-Bengals history

The Buccaneers and Bengals do not have a rivalry in the usual sense. They have never shared a division, never met in the playoffs, and for most of their history they have played each other once every three or four years, whenever the NFL's rotating schedule formula happens to pair the AFC North against the NFC South. Sunday's opener at Paycor Stadium, kickoff 1:00 PM ET, 19:00 CEST, will be only the 14th meeting between the two teams since 1976. Yet that short list of games is unusually rich: two blowouts, a stunning collapse, a shootout decided on the final play, and a franchise record for touchdown passes. Tampa Bay leads the all time series 7-6.

The first meeting, in the wrong conference

The Buccaneers and Bengals first met on October 10, 1976, at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. It was not the interconference novelty it would later become. For that one season only, the NFL had placed the expansion Buccaneers in the AFC West rather than the NFC, a scheduling quirk BucsWorld has covered in detail in Fifty years ago this week: the Buccaneers' first ever game. The Bengals shut out Tampa Bay 21-0, one shutout loss among many in a winless debut season. It would be four years before the two teams played again, this time as members of different conferences for good.

A first win, and an odd parallel to Sunday

That rematch came on September 7, 1980, and it produced Tampa Bay's first win in the series: 17-12 at Riverfront Stadium. The Buccaneers outgained Cincinnati 246 yards to 128 and controlled a rain soaked field under second year head coach John McKay. The detail worth pulling out ahead of Sunday is the date on the calendar. That 1980 win was Tampa Bay's Week 1 season opener, played in Cincinnati. Sunday's game will be only the second time in franchise history that the Buccaneers have opened a season at Cincinnati, and the first one went their way.

The 1980s did not stay kind to Tampa Bay in this series. On September 25, 1983, the Bengals won 23-17 in Tampa, and six years later Cincinnati blew the doors off entirely. On October 29, 1989, at Riverfront Stadium, Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason threw five touchdown passes to tie his own career high, and Cincinnati piled up eight touchdowns as a team in a 56-23 rout. It remains the most lopsided game in the series either way.

Six straight, from Dungy to Gruden

What followed is the longest streak in the head to head history: six consecutive Tampa Bay wins spanning 1995 to 2010, the closest thing the Buccaneers have ever had to a hex on Cincinnati. It started with a 19-16 win at home in 1995 and included two genuine blowouts.

The first came on December 27, 1998, when Tony Dungy's Buccaneers shut out the Bengals 35-0 in Cincinnati. The second came on September 29, 2002, in Jon Gruden's first season as head coach, the same season that ended with Tampa Bay's first Super Bowl title. The Bucs trailed early after Cincinnati linebacker Brian Simmons returned an interception 51 yards for a touchdown, then scored 35 unanswered points behind two long touchdown passes from quarterback Brad Johnson and a pick six of their own from linebacker Shelton Quarles, finishing with 363 yards of offense to Cincinnati's 168. The streak closed out with narrower wins in 2001, 2006 and 2010, the last of those a 24-21 escape in Cincinnati during Tampa Bay's surprise 10-6 season under Raheem Morris.

Cincinnati finally snapped the streak on November 30, 2014, winning 14-13 in Tampa, and has taken the last three meetings in the series.

2018: benched, nearly rescued, beaten on the final play

The strangest of those three came on October 28, 2018, at Paul Brown Stadium, the previous name for the stadium the Buccaneers visit again this Sunday. Jameis Winston threw four interceptions, one of them returned for a touchdown by Bengals safety Jessie Bates, and Tampa Bay fell well behind before halftime. Head coach Dirk Koetter benched Winston for Ryan Fitzpatrick, who nearly pulled off the rescue: Fitzpatrick threw two fourth quarter touchdown passes, including an 18 yard score with 1:05 left, to tie the game at 34-34 after Cincinnati had led 34-16 entering the final period. It was not enough. Bengals kicker Randy Bullock hit a 44 yard field goal as time expired, giving Cincinnati a 37-34 win in a game that swung from blowout to comeback to buzzer beater inside sixty minutes.

2022: Brady's last regular season meeting with Cincinnati

The most recent meeting, on December 18, 2022, at Raymond James Stadium, carries its own historical weight. Tampa Bay led 17-0 and its defense had Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow under pressure for most of the first half. Burrow then threw four touchdown passes as the Bengals scored 34 unanswered points, handing Tom Brady his eighth loss in a single season for the first time in his career and completing Cincinnati's sixth straight win of that stretch. Brady retired for good the following February, which makes this Tampa Bay's last regular season meeting with Cincinnati during his tenure with the team, and the last time the Buccaneers played the Bengals at all before Sunday.

The head to head record

What it means for Sunday

Tampa Bay still leads the all time series 7-6, but Cincinnati has won three of the last three meetings, including two in which a Tampa Bay lead or comeback came apart in the closing minutes. Neither of those trends will matter much to the two teams that take the field this year. Baker Mayfield opens his fourth season as Tampa Bay's starter and Todd Bowles his fifth as head coach, against a Bengals team built around Burrow that the Buccaneers have not faced since Brady's final autumn.

If recent history is any guide, the timing favors Tampa Bay. According to Sports Illustrated, Bowles is 4-0 in Week 1 as the Buccaneers' head coach, a streak that covers every season opener since he took over in 2022. What history does not favor is any assumption that the road trip itself is unusual. The Buccaneers have opened a season in Cincinnati exactly once before, in 1980, and they won. Whether that is a good omen or simply a coincidence from a very different era of this franchise is the kind of thing Sunday will settle on its own.