Which 2024 Bucs Games Are Primed For Prime Time?

All of this has been said to get to this point: A lot of Bucs fans reading this might respond with something along the lines of “we don’t want any prime time games because Tampa Bay always loses in prime time.”

And that’s fair.

If the 2024 schedule drops in a few weeks and Todd Bowles’ team has a minimal number of prime time matchups, there might be some celebrations among the Bucs faithful.

But the reality is, there are bound to be two or three prime time games on the slate when it’s released in the next couple of weeks. Mayfield and the Bucs became a pretty big story last season and they’re bound to be in the spotlight at least a bit in 2024.

So, which opponents might Tampa Bay match up with in these potential prime time games? Let’s have a look and try to work out some of the best guesses.

Possible Prime Time Games For The Bucs In 2024

First, a quick refresher on the opponents Tampa Bay will see in 2024:

Home: Commanders, Eagles, Raiders, Broncos, 49ers, Ravens, Saints, Falcons, Panthers
Away: Cowboys, Giants, Chargers, Chiefs, Lions, Saints, Falcons, Panthers

Now, here are four opponents on the Bucs’ 2024 schedule that the league might find suitable for a prime time matchup.

Atlanta Falcons

It feels like a shoe-in that one of the Bucs-Falcons games will be slotted for prime time this season. Since signing Kirk Cousins this offseason, Atlanta has quickly been crowned as the NFC South favorites in 2024. However, Cousins and the Falcons will have to unseat the back-to-back-to-back division champions first.

The Saints are always hanging around too, but Tampa Bay and Atlanta are presumably the popular picks to win this division. They played two tight games a year ago and appear to be very close in terms of talent level, so when you add that to the “Can the Falcons take over the NFC South?” storyline, you have the makings of a prime time game.

Perhaps one or both of the meetings between the two divisional foes will be scheduled for later in the season. That way, the chances of a possible prime time matchup having playoff implications is higher. Given the buzz around the Falcons, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the league schedule them as the hosts of a prime time matchup between the two sides.

Then again, if these two teams are also scheduled for a Week 18 game, perhaps that will be one that gets flagged for a potential flex.

Philadelphia Eagles

It feels like the Bucs will get at least one prime time home game in 2024, and the rest of the home slate lacks the same heat that this game would likely have. The 49ers, Ravens and Saints feel like the only other possibilities (unless it’s the Falcons, but I already made my point on thinking that would be a road prime time game for Tampa Bay).

San Francisco has owned Tampa Bay in recent years and the games haven’t been close. Baltimore and Tampa Bay met on a Thursday night in 2022, but there’s not much between the two sides other than both being playoff teams. And the Saints-Bucs rivalry produced some snoozers in prime time between 2020-2022.

So, Bucs-Eagles it is. This has become a fixture on the NFL’s prime time schedule in recent years. The two teams met on Thursday Night Football in Philadelphia back in 2021, then met on Monday Night Football in Tampa last season. Their playoff matchup then closed out Super Wild Card Weekend on Monday Night Football back in January.

Maybe having two Monday night meetings last season and highlighting this same matchup again would cause some fatigue for the national and international audiences, but the long history between the two sides and the fact that both teams have had sustained success in recent years and will be playoff contenders again in 2024 could outweigh that risk of fatigue.

Kansas City Chiefs

The NFL went right back to the Bucs and Chiefs in prime time the first chance it got after Super Bowl LV, with the two teams meeting on Sunday Night Football during the 2022 season. Kansas City went on to win the Super Bowl that year and just won it again, becoming the first team to go back-to-back since the 2003-2004 Patriots.

Patrick Mahomes and Co. remain the top dogs in the NFL and while this is a different Bucs team than the one that got the better of them in the Super Bowl before their back-to-back championships, this would still make for an intriguing matchup.

Kansas City is bound to benefit from having as many prime time games as possible and with the rest of the AFC West being so uninspiring right now, this pick is somewhat playing the percentages. But this game will be at Arrowhead, and it’ll be the team with the longest active playoff streak in the AFC (nine straight seasons) hosting the team with the longest active playoff streak in the NFC (four straight seasons).

That’s a good storyline itself and when you add in that this is a rematch of a still-pretty-recent Super Bowl, this feels like a Thursday Night Football contest.

Dallas Cowboys

We know how much the NFL loves putting the Cowboys in prime time, don’t we? Assuming Dallas gets five marquee matchups this season (because they will, won’t they?), Tampa Bay already has a good chance of being one of them just based on percentages.

But there’s also the fact that the Bucs and Cowboys’ three most recent meetings were on Thursday Night Football (2021), Sunday Night Football (2022) and Monday Night Football (2022-23 playoffs). Now, maybe those matchups were all because it was the perfect crossover of the Dallas Cowboys and Tom Brady.

That’s certainly possible, and it’s why this one probably feels the least likely of the four on this list. It’s hard to imagine there really being a significant amount of national interest in this game as a standalone matchup, and it’s just as possible that the league likes Bucs at Lions better due to it being a playoff rematch.

But because it’s the Cowboys, it’s at Jerry World and there’s a high possibility that one of these prime time games for Tampa Bay will be a bit of a head scratcher, the Dallas game slightly nudges the Detroit rematch off the list.