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Tampa Bay Buccaneers Todd Bowles standing on the sideline
Sportsbooks spend enormous amounts of money building numbers designed to make NFL teams roughly 50-50 propositions against the spread. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have responded by going 0-for-their-last-12.
Tampa Bay’s 23-16 loss to Minnesota as a 1.5-point underdog extended its losing streak against the spread to 12 consecutive games, the longest drought of the Super Bowl era, per CBS Sports. Somehow, this is not simply a case of one terrible team continually getting too many points: the Buccaneers were actually favored in eight of those games and lost every one outright.
Tampa Bay Cannot Even Win When Vegas Expects It To
That might be the most ridiculous part of the streak.
If Tampa Bay were getting seven points every week and losing by 20, there would not be much mystery here. Instead, sportsbooks have repeatedly looked at the Buccaneers and decided, “Yeah, these guys should win.”
Then they do not.
Three of the eight games Tampa Bay entered as a favorite came with spreads of at least seven points. Two involved the Bucs laying nine points—against New Orleans last season and Cleveland this year.
They lost both games outright.
The Browns upset was particularly brutal for anyone who decided Tampa Bay -9 looked like free money. Cleveland walked into Raymond James Stadium and won 23-19, extending a streak that had already survived an entire offseason.
This is less a cold betting trend and more an ongoing experiment to determine how many different ways one team can disappoint the market.
The Bucs are not sneaking through these games with narrow victories that happen to miss the number, either. They are just 2-10 outright during the same 12-game stretch.
The Last Buccaneers Cover Was Almost A Year Ago
The last time betting on Tampa Bay actually produced a winning ticket was Week 8 of the 2025 season.
The Bucs were 3.5-point favorites against New Orleans and won 23-3. NBC Sports notes that everything since then has ended with the Tampa Bay side of the betting slip going directly into the trash.
That was nearly 11 months ago.
Since then, Tampa Bay blew a 6-2 start last season, finished 8-9, missed the playoffs, and opened 2026 with three straight losses. Baker Mayfield is now sidelined with a dislocated thumb, leaving undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels atop the quarterback depth chart while Todd Bowles tries to stop the entire thing from sliding further downhill.
The strange part is that bookmakers have not completely abandoned them yet.
Point spreads are supposed to adjust when the market repeatedly gets a team wrong. Eventually, the number becomes cheap enough that somebody covers almost by accident.
Tampa Bay has somehow avoided that correction for 12 straight games.
Betting records from decades ago are not maintained as cleanly as normal NFL statistics, but multiple researchers have found no longer ATS losing streak anywhere in the Super Bowl era.