You will be able to watch the Falcons v. Buccaneers Thursday on RDS INFO and RDS.ca, or on RDS2 at the end of the Blue Jackets v. Senators.
The Atlanta Falcons were expected to be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ main rivals in the race for the NL South title.
Instead, they must settle for the role of spoilsport.
Kirk Cousins and the Falcons (4-9) will visit Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers (7-6) Thursday night in Tampa, in a game with a lot at stake for the home team.
The Bucs were on track to win their fifth straight section title before hitting a slump. They returned from a hiatus with a 6-2 record and were aiming for the top spot in the standings in the second half of the season.
But they hardly played like an NFL playoff-worthy team. The Bucs lost three straight games to teams with records above ‚500, barely managed to beat the lowly Arizona Cardinals, then lost at home to the dismal New Orleans Saints.
They are tied with the Carolina Panthers for first place and will face them twice over the next three weeks. But first, they’ll have to deal with a team that’s looking to sabotage their season.
“Nobody wants to be in that situation,” Falcons head coach Raheem Morris said of his team’s elimination. But, in reality, our job now is to play spoilsport. On Thursday we will face the Buccaneers, who we respect a lot and enjoy playing against. These are always very close matches, and I expect this one to be no exception. »
The Buccaneers control their playoff destiny. If they win their next three matches, then they will secure the title of their section before their match in the 18th week of activities, against the Panthers.
“It’s that playoff mentality,” Mayfield said. When you think about it, we are playing against an opponent from our section, who wants nothing more than to beat us and ruin our chances. So we go into the game saying, ‘OK, do they really have a lot to lose? Yes, because they are trying to eliminate us. So we are in this state of mind. It’s a playoff mentality, and we have to expect them to perform at their best. »
Kirk’s turn
Cousins beat the Buccaneers twice last season in his first year with the Falcons. He rushed for 785 yards, threw eight touchdown passes and made just one interception. He had 509 yards passing against them in one of those victories. Michael Penix Jr. got the start in the first week of activities, when the Bucs beat the Falcons 23-20.
Cousins returned to the team after Penix suffered a season-ending knee injury. The veteran quarterback is 1-3 in four starts, with three touchdowns, three interceptions and an efficiency rating of just 76.5.
“I don’t look at him as a backup quarterback, I look at him as a No. 1, and he has been a No. 1 for a long time,” Bucs head coach Todd Bowles said. He knows where to go with the ball, he’s very precise, he knows the attack like the back of his hand, so it’s going to be a challenge for us, and everyone has to know where he should be on the pitch. The challenge is to face this team. The whole team must learn lessons from what happened last year. »
Mayfield is appreciated
Mayfield has struggled the past four weeks with injuries, including a left shoulder sprain that forced him to miss the second half of last month’s game against the Los Angeles Rams. But Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich expects to see again the man who was a contender for NFL MVP during the first half of the season.
“It’s Houdini, you know? You watch him go up against some of the best defensive lines in the league, and you feel like he’s stuck, tackled, and all of a sudden, not only is he getting out of the most impossible situations, but he’s making a play, Ulbrich said. He’s as good, if not better, than anyone I’ve seen in a long, long time in terms of competitiveness and toughness. »
The meeting will be presented on RDS Info from 8:15 p.m.
