The Bucs will have their hands full on Sunday when they head into SoFi Stadium to face the Chargers. Los Angeles is the only team remaining on Tampa Bay’s schedule that is above .500, as Jim Harbaugh’s squad enters the game at 8-5.

Given who their head coach is, the Chargers are disciplined, and they’re built on running the football and playing tough defense. Not to mention, the Chargers have Justin Herbert under center, and he has thrown 14 touchdowns to one interception this season. The Bucs will be a long way from home and come in short-handed on defense, so it may be up to Baker Mayfield and the offense to win this one against the league’s No. 1 scoring defense.

Panthers K Eddy Pineiro Photo by: USA Today

With all of that said, this is a tough test for Tampa Bay. Todd Bowles’ team could use all the breaks it can get in this one, though there’s one factor that the Bucs have benefited from this season that they can’t lean on this Sunday. That factor? The opposing team’s kicking game.

Opposing kickers have missed 10 field goals against the Bucs this season, going 24-of-34. That’s just a 70.1% success rate, which is bizarrely low. It started from the jump, with Commanders kicker Cade York going 0-for-2 against the Bucs in Week 1. That was a game Tampa Bay won 37-20.

More recently, Tampa Bay beat Carolina 26-23 in overtime in a game that saw Carolina’s Eddy Pineiro go 3-of-5 with misses from 38 and 45 yards out.

Now, Tampa Bay hasn’t always taken advantage of missed kicks in the form of actually winning the games. But Bowles and Co. have stayed in plenty of games due to missed field goals by the opposition.

Bucs HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today

Atlanta’s Younghoe Koo missed two in the first meeting between the top two teams in the NFC South back in early October, and Tampa Bay led late and nearly won the game off the back of those two misses (one of which was blocked). Koo missed another field goal in the Week 8 rematch, which kept the Bucs in the game before they went on to lose 31-26.

When the 49ers came to town in Week 10, Jake Moody nearly handed the Bucs the game with three missed field goals. But Tampa Bay didn’t take full advantage, and Moody went on to hit the game-winning kick as time expired.

The point is, opposing kickers have lent the Bucs a helping hand pretty often in 2024. It’s made scoring numbers for Bowles’ defense look better than they really are, and it’s been a crutch for the team to stay in games on several occasions.

So, why can’t the Bucs count on more help in the way of missed kicks in Sunday’s game at Los Angeles?

Cameron Dicker Is One Of The Best The Bucs Have Seen This Year

The trick answer is that the Bucs are never really able to count on missed kicks to keep them in games. It’s pure dumb luck, to an extent. But that luck is very unlikely to show up at SoFi Stadium, as Chargers kicker Cameron Dicker is one of the NFL’s best.

Dicker has converted on 28 of his 30 field goal attempts this year, which is good for a 93.3% conversion rate. Very few kickers have a better mark this season, and those who do have at least eight fewer attempts. Anders Carlson is 11-for-11 between two teams this year, while Tennessee’s Nick Folk and Detroit’s Jake Bates are at 95.5%, with both going 21-for-22 to this point.

Chargers HC Jim Harbaugh and K Cameron Dicker Photo by: USA Today

Dicker has been Mr. Reliable for Los Angeles for years now. After signing in 2022 after one game with the Eagles, he went 19-of-20 (95.0%) over 10 games with the Chargers. He followed that up by going 31-of-33 (93.9%) in 2023, and now he’s 28-of-30 (93.3%) through 13 games this year. For his career, the former Texas Longhorn is 80-of-85 on field goals, which is a 94.1% conversion rate. Four of those five misses have come from 50+, where he is 15-of-19 overall.

That means from 49 yards and in, Dicker is 65-of-66 (98.5%) in his career. That lone miss inside of 49 yards came in a Week 9 win over the Browns early last month, when he missed from 44. His only other miss this season came from 56 in a Week 4 loss to the Chiefs.

So, as much as the Bucs have benefited from missed kicks this year, it would almost be historic if they were to benefit from another one on Sunday.

Bend-don’t-break is unlikely to be a fruitful strategy for Tampa Bay’s defense against Los Angeles because more often than not, even bending will mean three points. And those three points will add up, especially considering the Chargers defense is only allowing 15.9 points per game.

In what is likely to be a close game, the foot of Dicker and the strength of the Los Angeles defense could prove to be the difference. And that would be music to Jim Harbaugh’s ears.