The first time the Tampa Bay Buccaneers played the Atlanta Falcons in 2025, in their season opener in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Bucs were trailing by three points with a minute to play before Baker Mayfield ripped a 25-yard pass down the right hashmarks to rookie wide receiver Emeka Egbuka. Moments later, Antoine Winfield Jr. made a dazzling pass break-up at the Bucs' goal line to prevent Atlanta from retaking the lead. The Bucs would hold on for the 23-20.
When the Buccaneers and Falcons got together again in Week 15 at Raymond James Stadium, the Buccaneers had a 28-20 lead and the ball in Atlanta territory with eight-and-a-half minutes left in the fourth quarter, but Mayfield was intercepted by Dee Alford to end that scoring threat and set up a touchdown drive. After a failed two-point conversion, the Bucs still had a two-point lead and a chance to run out the clock with one more first down. Mayfield had Egbuka on a deep crossing route that would have done the trick but delivered the ball a bit behind the receiver and it was broken up, leading to a punt. The Falcons then walked it off with a 43-yard Zane Gonzalez field goal after converting on a fourth-and-14.
After the game, Mayfield pointed to those two throws as the main reasons the Bucs failed to hold on to a two-touchdown lead and put the game's outcome on his own shoulders. The bigger picture is that, during the team's recent 1-5 slide, the clutch plays the team had been making on both sides of the ball to win five games by three or fewer points have dried up. The Buccaneers need to regain that early-season tendency to shine in the pressure moments to succeed in the upcoming three-week battle for the NFC South crown. The Bucs have worn that crown at the end of the last four seasons, often after getting on a hot streak in December.
"I don't know if I can really put my finger on one thing," said Mayfield of the Bucs' recent failure to pull out the close ones. "In years past, I've said that we got the little things corrected and just played simple ball, bread-and-butter plays and executed really well. I think maybe in the last few years we did that and now it's just a matter of making the plays in critical moments that we need to. Like I said after the game, I [have] to make those throws, I [have] to make those plays, can't turn the ball over, so that comes down to me."
While Mayfield is unsurprisingly showing leadership by taking the blame, quarterbacks don't have to ask to receive an inordinate amount of praise or blame for wins and losses. That's doubly true of head coaches, but Mayfield said any criticism in the current situation should not be aimed at Todd Bowles.
"Like I said though post-game, it comes down to the offense," he said. "You're up two scores, you have a chance to put the game away and you don't. The easy thing to do is point at the defense because in [those] situations, it's the last thing you see in the game, but if you look at the whole game, you look at the way it played, blame me, don't blame Todd."
Mayfield may be aiming the finger at himself, but no one else in the Bucs' locker room is doing that, nor have they resorted to blaming each other for the losses. Mayfield says that's the product of the team having an extremely tight group in 2025.
"The finger pointing [is] only happening if you have bad culture in the building," he said. "That's not a problem we have to deal with. We met on Monday with the offense, and I told them what I said in the postgame press conference, I said it's on me, it's on this group, I expect us to be able to score more than 28 in a situation like that and put the game out of reach. You just nip it in the bud in the beginning."
