Buccaneers mired in historically poor 12-game stretch as 0-3 start, Baker Mayfield injury emphasize woes

Tampa Bay defied expectations for the worse dating to the 2025 bye week

Sep 28, 2026 at 10:49 am ET • 3 min read

At their bye week in 2025, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 6-2 and headed toward a postseason berth. From that point forward, hardly anything has gone their way. The Buccaneers are off to an 0-3 start to begin the 2026 season, their coach is under immense scrutiny, their starting quarterback has a dislocated thumb and the last 12 games have been as disappointing as they come.

In the time since that bye week, the Buccaneers are 0-12 against the spread. That is the longest streak without a cover in the Super Bowl era, according to Action Network. Tampa Bay was the betting favorite in eight of those games and lost each of them outright, including the three where it was a favorite of at least a touchdown.

The struggles are not isolated to the point spread, either. The Buccaneers are just 2-10 outright in that same stretch. But coach Todd Bowles says the first nine games in that sample size are irrelevant to the direction of the franchise.

"We understand that, but it's this season now," Bowles said on Sunday after a 23-16 loss to the Minnesota Vikings. "Nothing counts last year no matter who you are."

From the perspective of making the 2026 postseason, yes, last year's record has no bearing on what this edition of the Buccaneers can accomplish. But the abysmal conclusion to 2025 also provides important context for this team's momentum. It is why Bowles is widely viewed to have limited job security and why there is an argument to be made that Tampa Bay should not have invested so heavily in its contract extension for quarterback Baker Mayfield.

Poor early returns on Baker Mayfield's contract

Mayfield and the Buccaneers were locked into a high-profile contract standoff this summer that appeared as though it would carry into the regular season. The sides surprisingly got a deal done just ahead of Week 1, and they agreed on a lucrative three-year extension that placed Mayfield in a tie as the third-highest-paid quarterback in the NFL on a per-year basis at $55 million.

At his best, Mayfield is worth every penny. He was a dark-horse MVP candidate as recently as two years ago and earned two Pro Bowl selections in his first two years with the franchise. He regressed in 2025, though, and this year is off to an even worse start. From an efficiency standpoint, Mayfield stands in the bottom tier of NFL starting quarterbacks.

Here are his ranks among qualified passers:

Category	Value	Rank
EPA per dropback	-0.30	31st
Passer rating	80.0	28th
Passing touchdowns	2	27th
Completion rate	63.5%	21st

Making matters worse is that Mayfield left Sunday's loss with a dislocated thumb. His departure in the fourth quarter left the Buccaneers with an undrafted rookie, Jalon Daniels, atop the offense and raised concerns about his availability in the weeks to come. The team has yet to detail a timeline for his return.

Buccaneers start slow in 2026

There are only five winless teams through the first three weeks of 2026. The Buccaneers are the only one in the NFC. They stand in lockstep with the Miami Dolphins, Tennessee Titans, Houston Texans and Los Angeles Chargers in the early race for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2027 draft, and that is not a conversation this team expected to have when it entered the year in search of a return to the playoffs.

Playing in the worst division in football helps mitigate the disastrous nature of this rough start. The NFC South is the only division in which all four teams hold a losing record. There is still a path to the postseason for the last-place Buccaneers, but they cannot afford to keep digging themselves into a hole even if the teams around them are also uninspiring.

"The funny thing is we're 0-3 and we're a game out of first place," Bowles said. "We have to get our stuff together. We gotta reach down and do more -- to a coach, to a person, to a player. We gotta do more, figure out what we can do more, how can we be better and come back tomorrow and get ready to go."

If this was an isolated three-game losing streak, then it would not take much imagination to picture the Buccaneers righting the ship. But with that 0-12 mark against the spread and 10 losses since last October, there is not much proof of concept.