Quick: how many primetime games did the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have last year?
The answer is one, and that was the first Thursday Night Football matchup of the year in Week 2. After playing five of their first six games outside of the early 1 PM ET window (including one London game), the Bucs played all but one game after their Week 7 bye at 1 PM (and that one game was a road tilt in Seattle).
Things will be different this year, thanks to Tampa Bay’s additions of both Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski. Not only would you expect the Bucs to be featured in primetime on Sunday or Monday night this year, but you’d also expect them to get more featured games on Fox as opposed to being the third or fourth game in the early window.
Tampa Bay’s placement in the NFC South, typically one of the league’s more competitive divisions (though that didn’t come to fruition in 2019, when the Saints ended up boat racing the Bucs, Falcons, and Panthers), also helps matters. The Brady vs Brees storyline writes itself in the matchup with the Saints, and against the Falcons, ghosts of Super Bowl LI will plague Matt Ryan and flood the promotion of those games.
Outside of the NFC South, the Bucs only have a couple of games that seem enticing. I would assume their home game with the Chiefs will at the very least be a Fox game of the week, and the same could be true when they host the Packers. But aside from those two, are the NFL’s TV partners really going to get that excited about matchups with the Rams, Vikings, and Chargers in Tampa, or the Bears, Broncos, or Raiders on the road? Sure, much of this depends on what exactly the league’s schedule for each week looks like (the NFL still hasn’t released their 2020 schedule, and it doesn’t seem like they will until sometime in May), but in a vacuum, the opportunities to feature the Bucs aren’t all that robust.
However, it’s important for the league’s TV partners to not back the Bucs too heavily. Last year, the NFL went big on the Cleveland Browns, giving them three primetime games out of their first five. Cleveland went 1-2 in those three primetime games, started their season 2-6, and had just one primetime game after Week 5 (a TNF game with the Steelers in Week 11, most notable for Myles Garrett turning his helmet into a weapon).
If I were to hazard a guess as to what the Bucs’ early season timeslots might be, I’d say they have (of course, depending on what the schedule itself looks like) three or four (including TNF) primetime games in the first seven or eight weeks of the season. If the Bucs live up to expectations, they can easily have a couple more games flexed into Sunday Night Football in the second half of the season as the schedule allows. If they don’t, the networks can just pretend they don’t exist, like they did last year with the Browns.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I’m curious to see what the departure of Brady does to the Patriots’ national TV windows in 2020. Last year, New England had five primetime windows, including back to back tilts in Weeks 6 and 7 against the Giants and Jets on Thursday and Monday. This season, the Patriots have a ridiculous schedule, featuring matchups in Kansas City, Houston, Seattle, and twice in LA, while they welcome Baltimore and San Francisco to Foxborough. I highly doubt they’ll get five primetime games again, but with a schedule featuring seven games against 2019 playoff teams (the Bills twice, Ravens, Chiefs, 49ers, Seahawks, and Texans), they’re not going to get completely shut out.
