Thursday Night Football features the Buccaneers taking on the Falcons…
…is the winner the best team in the division?
What To Make Of The NFC South
What Happened: The NFC South, by odds currently on offer as of this writing, is as tightly contested as any division in the NFL. Of the three teams, only the Panthers (1-3) are playing the role most forecasts thought they would. (As bad as they’ve been, they’ve at least showed signs of life since making the switch from Bryce Young to Andy Dalton.)
Tonight’s featured teams, the Buccaneers (3-1) and Falcons (2-2), sit second and first in FanDuel’s odds for winning the South; Tampa Bay is +195, Atlanta with shorter odds at +165. The 2-2 Saints, who exploded out of the gate and cooled off immediately, still have a +220 chance as well.
Why It Matters: Obviously there is no getting around a team’s record. (“You are what your record says you are,” legendary coach Bill Parcells would say.) But point differential is often a useful tool to gauge a team’s standing in the wider NFL landscape, especially with only a four-game sample of wins and losses to work with so far.
Things in the NFC South are upside down for the moment. If we throw out the Panthers and focus on the other three teams, Tampa Bay sits in first by virtue of its record, but has scored fewer points AND allowed more points than New Orleans. The Saints have a point differential of +57, which is tied with the Vikings for the best in the league.
Atlanta, meanwhile, is ahead of the Saints in the standings (ATL has one division win, NO is 1-1) but has given up 10 more points than its scored. Both the Dirty Birds and Bucs have defeated the Eagles; Baker Mayfield engineered an impressive win over the Lions, while Kirk Cousins had his team in the red zone with a chance to knock off the Chiefs.
Parsing what’s real here and what’s not isn’t easy. Adding Cousins to a strong Falcons roster was supposed to vault that team to real contender status; the Saints seemed in a post-Drew Brees “what are we even doing here?” rut, while the Bucs ran it back with a mediocre 9-8 team. So far, those things might come to fruition, or might just be misguided perceptions.
What We’re Watching Today
Mets at Brewers (7:08 PM ET) – At least MLB got one series to go three games. The Mets were six outs away from joining the Tigers and Royals in pulling off Wild Card road sweeps. (The Padres took 2-of-2 as the home team. Impressive, but a little less so.) New York starts Jose Quintana, who was in vintage form in four September starts, against Tobias Myers for Milwaukee. It’s a big spot for the Brewers rookie, but with a strong bullpen, he won’t have a long leash if Francisco Lindor and Co. get on the scoreboard early.
Buccaneers at Falcons (8:15 PM ET) – TB receiver Mike Evans is currently averaging 53.5 receiving yards per game, which puts him on pace for a 910-yard season. Which, you may notice, is not a 1,000-yard season, a mark Evans hasn’t fallen short of in any of his 10 NFL seasons. He had a big game on Sunday vs. Philly, and we’d love to see this streak continue.
The Look Ahead
Bucky Irving RUSH ATTEMPTS – It’s time to pull the plug on the “Rachaad White as lead back” experiment. White is averaging under three yards per carry and has yet to find the end zone this season. There are signs that Bucky Irving is indeed in line for more work — against Philly last week, Irving got his most carries of the season (10) and largest share of offensive snaps (42%) while White logged 58% of the snaps on offense after being at 70%+ in Weeks 1-3. Irving’s 5.8 YPC shows he’s got some juice rushing the ball, so we expect him to be more involved again tonight and to exceed his line of 9.5 carries when it’s all said and done.
