Week 4 Bucs @ Patriots (The Return)
The Return, the most anticipated game of the NFL season so far. Tom Brady is back in Foxborough for the first time since throwing a game-losing pick-six in the Patriots vs. Titans game in the 2019 Wild Card round.
Brady had many things on his belt on Sunday night. First, he was only 68 yards short of breaking Drew Brees’ all-time passing yards record, which he did break on a 29-yard pass to Mike Evans. He also had the chance to be the fourth quarterback in NFL history to beat all 32 teams as he played in New England for the first 20 years of his career. In his 22nd year in the NFL, Brady has set so many records and on Sunday night just added to his trophy case.
Now to what happened on the field of play. The Bucs had a great start in the first half as the defense was making stops, the offense looked good, but could not get in the endzone. Standing out in their Bucs debut were NFL legends at the cornerback position, Richard Sherman and Piere Desir. The Bucs suffered multiple injuries during the game including maybe the most athletic defensive back on this Bucs team in Carlton Davis III, which is why Desir came in. The Bucs had a rough second half to the game with the defense not being able to make a stop and the effects of Gronk being out certainly showed. They struggled with making big plays in the Red Zone, but Mike Evans and Leonard Fournette helped Brady out. You could tell Brady had a hard time with the crowd as he tried his best for them not to get to him, along with the weather.
It shook Brady as he didn’t have a great game. Mac Jones wrecked Tampa Bay’s defense in the rough second half for the Bucs and made it a close game. Thankfully, the Buccaneers former kicker Nick Folk had the game on his leg. Despite an almost perfect season in 2020, Folk was known by many Bucs fans for missing kicks when he played in Tampa. As usual, Folk missed another and the Bucs pulled the win out 19-17 as Brady set many records and the Bucs improved to 3-1 on the new season.
The Bucs defense will look to improve over this week as they travel back home to Tampa. Expect the Bucs offense to get better as well. The Bucs will go home to face the Dolphins in the battle of the state. The Dolphins just came off a loss to the 0-3 Colts as the Dolphins are now 1-3 in a rough start to the season. The game next week will kick off at 1:00 pm on CBS as the Bucs will try to improve their lead in the NFC south.

Week 5: Dolphins @ Bucs (Sunshine State Showdown)
In this week 5 matchup, the Buccaneers took on the Dolphins in a Sunshine State Showdown. Like the Bucs and Patriots game last week, a Tampa Bay player had his eye on a record. Receiver Antonio Brown was just 2 or 3 receptions short of breaking Hall of Fame receiver Marvin Harrison’s record to become the fastest player in NFL history to get 900 career receptions. It was clear Brady wanted to capitalize Brown’s record, as AB had one of the best games of his career with 7 receptions for 124 yards and 2 touchdowns.
It was a great day for the offense in general. Brady also had one of the best games of his career, throwing for 411 yards and 5 touchdowns, the first time he had ever done so. Bucs legendary receiver Mike Evans caught 6 passes for 113 yards and 2 touchdowns. Even the running attack was good, as Leonard Fournette ran for 67 yards and a touchdown. However, like last week, the absence of Rob Gronkowski was highly evident. Backup tight end O.J. Howard dropped a pass and gave up a couple of blocks.
Things were slower on the defensive side to start the game. On the very first drive of the game, Dolphins quarterback Jacoby Brissett led his team all the way down the field. The defense wasn’t getting in his face and the receiver coverage was really bad. Fortunately, the defense held them to a field goal.
It was a different story from there, however. Bucs outside linebacker Shaquill Barrett had 2 sacks on one of which, he forced a fumble. Due to defensive tackle Vita Vea’s play-making, Dolphins running back Myles Gaskin was allowed to only 25 yards on the ground along with the help of Vea’s fellow linemen Jason Pierre-Paul, William Gholston, and Ndamukong Suh.
The passing attack was another story. While it had gotten much better after the first drive, Gaskin caught 10 passes for 74 yards and 2 touchdowns. Miami tight end Mike Gesicki also had a good game, catching 4 passes for 43 yards.
The Bucs will kick off week 6 of the 2021 NFL season on a Thursday night matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles on FOX.

Week 6 Bucs @ Eagles (PrimeTime Night)
This week in Bucs football was a short week after the big win over the Dolphins. The Bucs defense continued to struggle with injuries as Richard Sherman, the veteran corner who was signed before the Patriots game went down with a hamstring injury. The young Cornerback core didn’t do terribly, but they did struggle with penalties. The Bucs offense started strong and Lenard Fournette did not disappoint. Tom looked good even with that hurt thumb. It really showed up in the second half when he had a hard time completing passes. In the first half Brady took the Bucs down the field and threw a touchdown to OJ Howard his first of the season. OJ definitely had a rebound week from the last as he continued to get work with Gronk out. Cam Brate is getting his usual work load with a decent amount of targets. Philadelphia’s offense really took a hit with Jalen Hurts running for his life all game long, but the Bucs only put down two sacks after all that. Hurts really stopped them in the run game, but failed to get a lot of yards with Miles Sanders as the Eagles have not been running the ball. Both Defenses had their moments as the Bucs were the team in the first half going into halftime with a 21-7 lead. The Eagles were the team of the second half with Hurts two rushing touchdowns to make the game 28-22. Gronk looks to get healthy soon, andCarlton Davis and Sean Murphy-Bunting are still getting healthy, but expect them to be back very soon. Antoine Winfield will be back soon with him being in concussion protocol for the past week. Along with Lavaonte David he will be out for at least a week or two more because of the way the Dolphins lineman threw him down without a penalty. That seems to be a trend with the Bucs as Derek Barnett would not let Tom Brady walk around and kept shoving him after one play with no flag by the ref!!Speaking of Brady, hopefully his thumb gets healthy as it got fatigued at the end of the first, but the GOAT still got it done as he went 34/42 which was a 81% completion percentage. He also threw for two tuddies!!!! and one pick. That adds to his league leading 17 touchdown passes, with only 3 interceptions on the year. He also leads the league in passing yards with 2,064 already. Most of those going to Mike Evans who has 420 receiving yards, he set the NFL record for all years in the league with 1,000+ yards in his first 7 seasons, he continues to be on track for that. Antionio Brown is back with 418 revining yards and looks like old AB again after the first six weeks.Chris Godwin and Lenny are also shining stars as Lenny’s work load only got bigger with Brady’s thumb being hurt he ran for 81 yards and two tuddies!!!!! They will rest, get healthy and get better over this long week. Basically like another bye week. They face a good defense in “da Bears” as they say in Chicago, and look to improve to 6-1 next week as they will have the Bucs Crucial Catch Intercept Caner game against Chicago next week. With a final score of 28-22 in Philly. The Bucs will look to rest up and get healthy for their bigtime game on CBS at Raymond James.