BucsWorld's 2026 predictions: record, stats and the calls we will regret

Eight and nine. That was Tampa Bay's record in 2025, good for 380 points scored and 411 allowed, and not good enough to win a division it had owned for four straight years. On Sunday the Buccaneers open 2026 at Cincinnati, and before a snap is played, we are putting our own numbers on paper. These are BucsWorld's predictions, our opinion, not a forecast copied from a betting market or another outlet, and we are grounding every baseline in what actually happened in 2025.

The record: our call

We have Tampa Bay finishing 10-7 and winning the NFC South.

That is a bolder call than the record itself suggests, because three teams tied at 8-9 last year and Carolina kept the division only on a tiebreaker, as we detailed in our NFC South preview. Nobody in this division separated itself in 2025, and nothing about the 2026 rosters changes that instantly. So why do we like Tampa Bay to be the team that does?

Start with the quarterback. Baker Mayfield now has a three-year, $165 million extension in hand, signed days before the opener, replacing the uncertainty that hung over his contract year all offseason. A settled, motivated Mayfield throwing to a full receiver room, once Emeka Egbuka and Jalen McMillan are actually healthy rather than just back at practice, is a better bet than the injury-shortened version of that offense in 2025. Then there is the pass rush: Vita Vea stayed after his summer trade request, Calijah Kancey is back from the torn pectoral that cost him 14 games, and rookie Rueben Bain Jr. gives Todd Bowles a fourth genuine threat up front, even with the shoulder concern that has him questionable for the opener itself.

Set against that: Mike Evans and Lavonte David are both gone, two of the most productive and experienced players on the roster, and the cornerback room is thin enough that Bowles himself has said he needs "two corners who can really play." Our call assumes the pass rush upgrade outweighs the losses at receiver and linebacker, and that a full, healthy Bowles defense finally converts its blitz volume into wins the way it could not in November 2025, when three straight losses to New England, Buffalo and the Rams buried the season. If that defense does not show up, this is an 8-9 team again, not a 10-7 one.

Team numbers: our call against the 2025 baseline

Two things stand out in that table. We have the run game climbing even with Rachaad White gone to Washington in free agency, because a full season of Bucky Irving as the clear lead back, with Sean Tucker mixed in for short yardage, should be more efficient than last year's timeshare. And we have the defensive sack total jumping by six, which is really a bet on one thing: Kancey and Bain both being available for something close to a full season, something neither managed in 2025.

Player projections

Egbuka is the number we feel best about. He already out-produced every healthy receiver on the roster last year as a rookie, as our piece on life after Mike Evans laid out, and he inherits the target share of a departed franchise legend without another proven number one in the room to share it with.

Three bold calls

1. Emeka Egbuka becomes the first Buccaneer since Mike Evans himself to top 1,100 receiving yards in a season, doing it in year two.
2. Rueben Bain Jr. plays through the shoulder scare and finishes as Tampa Bay's sack leader among edge rushers, not just its most talked about rookie.
3. Tampa Bay wins the NFC South with a defense-and-turnovers formula rather than a top-ten scoring offense, a quieter path than the Brady-era teams took to the same result.

What would make us wrong

The Bain shoulder injury is the first thing to watch. If it lingers past Week 1 into a multi-week absence, the pass rush math behind our sack projection falls apart fast, and Al-Quadin Muhammad filling in is a downgrade from the player Tampa Bay drafted 15th overall. The cornerback room is the second risk: a group built on second-year players and rookies can hide its inexperience against a bad offense and get exposed against a good one, and there are several good ones on this schedule. Third, our receiver math assumes Egbuka and McMillan are actually healthy for most of the season, not just cleared for practice in September; both were still working back from injury as of this week. And if Kevin Stefanski's arrival in Atlanta produces a faster turnaround than anyone expects, the division race we are calling for Tampa Bay could belong to someone else entirely.

Predictions in September are an argument, not a guarantee, and this is the one we are prepared to defend through January. A team that finished 8-9 twice in a row does not become a division winner by accident. It becomes one because the specific things that went wrong, an unhealthy pass rush and a passing game stretched thin by injuries, get fixed. We think enough of that fixing happened this offseason. Cincinnati will start telling us on Sunday whether we are right.