The NFL is set to unveil its 2024 schedule this coming Wednesday, May 15. That means the Bucs will soon know what’s in store for this fall as far as dates, times and the order they’ll see their opponents. Of course, they already know which teams they’ll be seeing in 2024, as their opponents have been set since the end of the 2023 campaign.

There may not be an exact science to the NFL schedule-making process, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at trends and patterns with the Bucs’ recent schedules to potentially uncover clues about the 2024 slate. At the very least, some of what has happened in the past can be a loose guide for what to expect when the schedule comes out Wednesday.

Of course, after putting the time in to research some of these trends, there’s every chance that the league will drop a nonsensical schedule and make all of this meaningless. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with playing a guessing game and having some fun in the lead-up to schedule release day.

So, let’s dive in.

Will The Bucs Get To Open The 2024 Season At Ray Jay?

Bucs fans – Photo by: USA Today

The Bucs started both the 2022 and 2023 seasons away from home. In 2022, they opened the year with a Sunday Night Football game at Dallas. Last year, their season opener was a Sunday afternoon matchup at Minnesota. Tampa Bay did open the 2021 season at home, but that’s standard for defending Super Bowl champions.

That 2021 season opener was an outlier, at least in recent years. Whether it’s a trend or coincidence, the team has opened three of its last four seasons away from home. Remember, the 2020 season began in New Orleans. Going even further back, the Bucs were scheduled to open six of the last eight seasons on the road. The reason for the wording there was the unusual circumstances of 2017, when Tampa Bay was originally scheduled to open the season in Miami but didn’t because of a hurricane.

It might sound wild to imagine Todd Bowles’ team having to open up on the road in 2022, 2023 and 2024, but there’s recent precedent for the NFL doing that to the Bucs. Had that 2017 Week 1 game at Miami been played as planned, it would’ve been the second of three consecutive season openers on the road for Tampa Bay. The team opened 2016 at Atlanta and then had its opener at New Orleans in 2018.

Recent precedent aside, you’d like to think things even out and there will be a Week 1 home game this September. In 2024, the Bucs are scheduled for nine home games. They’ll host the Saints, Falcons, Panthers, Eagles, Commanders, Broncos, Raiders, Ravens and 49ers. It’s plausible that one of those nine home matchups is slated for Week 1, and the weekend is wide open at Raymond James Stadium given that USF plays at Alabama that Saturday. But with that being said…

USF’s Schedule Hasn’t Always Played A Role In The Bucs’ Home Slate

Houston DT Ed Oliver – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

You might think it would be ideal for the Bucs to play home games on different weekends than the University of South Florida, considering USF plays its home games at Raymond James Stadium. Logistically, it can be a lot for the stadium to host games on back-to-back days considering staffing, field conditions and the fact that signage and field paint has to be flipped from green and gold to red and pewter. But it doesn’t seem as if that’s all taken into account within the NFL offices.

In 2023, three of the Bucs’ home games came on a Sunday that was preceded by a Bulls home game on Saturday. A fourth, the team’s Monday Night Football game against the Eagles in Week 3, was two days after a USF home game.

The year before, though, there was only one occurrence of Bucs and USF home games scheduled on the same weekend, and it didn’t even work out that way. A hurricane forced that scheduled Bulls home game to be played at FAU’s stadium, then the Bucs were able to host the Chiefs on Sunday night as planned anyway.

To further illustrate the point, Tampa Bay’s 2021 season opener was scheduled on a Thursday, two days before USF was set to host Florida at Raymond James Stadium. There were then two instances that season when there were Bulls and Bucs games at Ray Jay on back-to-back days.

In 2024, USF has home games on Aug. 31 (before the NFL season begins), Sept. 21, Oct. 11, Oct. 19, Nov. 9 and Nov. 23. I told you that for no reason, though, because the league is unlikely to consider this at all when making the Bucs’ schedule.

College Football Bowl Games Haven’t Been Much Of A Factor, Either

Bucs WR Mike Evans – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Just like USF games haven’t factored into when the Bucs have home games, college football bowl season hasn’t had much of an effect in recent years either. Raymond James Stadium hosts the Gasparilla Bowl just before Christmas and the ReliaQuest Bowl (formerly the Outback Bowl) on or around New Year’s Day. But there hasn’t been much of a concerted effort to make sure the Bucs are on the road around these dates, at least in the last couple of seasons.

In 2022, the Bucs had a home game the day before Mississippi State and Illinois squared off in the ReliaQuest Bowl. Tampa Bay actually clinched the NFC South in that home game, beating the Panthers on Jan. 1. The Bulldogs and Illini then played on Jan. 2. Tampa Bay was on the road, however, three days after the 2022 Gasparilla Bowl.

Last season, the Bucs had home games around both of the bowl games in Tampa. They hosted the Jaguars on Christmas Eve, two days after UCF and Georgia Tech played in the Gasparilla Bowl. The next week, the Saints came to town the day before LSU and Wisconsin met in the ReliaQuest Bowl. That was a lot of football played on that field in a two-week span, but it was proof that the bowl schedule doesn’t have to be a factor as the NFL schedules out the Bucs’ home games.

How Will The Bucs’ NFC South Schedule Play Out?

Bucs RB Rachaad White – Photo by: USA Today

The Bucs obviously have their six NFC South games set in stone on a yearly basis, with home and away games against the Saints, Falcons and Panthers. But there rarely seems to be any rhyme or reason to the way the games are scheduled out.

There have been recent seasons that saw Tampa Bay play both of its games against one divisional opponent before even playing one of the games against another divisional foe. In those cases and some others, the team has then had to play the same divisional foe twice in a short span, sometimes as close as twice in three weeks.

The league (perhaps inadvertently) created a pattern with the Bucs’ NFC South games between 2022 and 2023. In both seasons, they’ve played each of the other divisional opponents once before repeating a matchup.

The pattern comes in here: In 2022, they played two away games and one home game (at New Orleans, vs. Atlanta, at Carolina) in the first round of games. Then, in 2023, they played two home games and one away game (at New Orleans, vs. Atlanta, vs. Carolina) in the first round of games. So, does that pattern persist in 2024? If so, expect Tampa Bay to play two of its first three NFC South games on the road.

The other interesting wrinkle to follow is the late-season NFC South showdowns. The league likes to have as much playoff implication drama as possible late in the season, which is why it often schedules divisional matchups throughout Weeks 15-18. Since 2010, the NFL has made it so that the final week of the regular season always features divisional matchups.

As a result, Tampa Bay hasn’t closed a season with a non-NFC South matchup since finishing the 2008 season against Oakland. The season finale breakdown for the Bucs over the last 10 years is as follows:

2023: at Carolina
2022: at Atlanta
2021: vs. Carolina
2020: vs. Atlanta
2019: vs. Atlanta
2018: vs. Atlanta
2017: vs. New Orleans
2016: vs. Carolina
2015: at Carolina
2014: vs. New Orleans

The Bucs haven’t closed a season with the Saints since 2017, so perhaps the league circles back to that for 2024. However, with Tampa Bay and Atlanta expected to be fighting for the division title, would the NFL want to set up the potential for a Week 18 matchup that has the NFC South on the line?

Will The Bucs Reap The Benefit Of A Later Bye Week In 2024?

The last piece of intrigue is when the Bucs’ bye week will fall. Last year, they got the short end of the stick with a Week 5 bye. That meant 13 straight weeks with a game to end the season.

The year before, Tampa Bay began the season with 10 straight games before a Week 11 bye. Could the bye fall more in the middle this season? That might be the best-case scenario, and it was as recently as 2021 when the team had a midseason bye week, getting it in Week 9 that year.

My Mock Bucs Schedule For 2024

Bucs TE Cade Otton – Photo by: USA Today

If one thing has become clear throughout all of this research, it’s that there really is no predicting the NFL schedule. Some factors matter some years and are ignored in others. Trends may emerge, but they may be more coincidental than calculated.

But just for fun and because I’m unapologetically a schedule nerd (schedule release day has always been a big deal to me, can’t you tell?), here’s my crack at predicting the Bucs’ 2024 schedule:

Week 1: vs. Carolina (Sunday 1:00)
Week 2: at Los Angeles Chargers (Sunday 4:05)
Week 3: vs. Philadelphia (Sunday 1:00)
Week 4: vs. Denver (Sunday 1:00)
Week 5: at Atlanta (Thursday Night Football)
Week 6: vs. San Francisco (Sunday 1:00)
Week 7: at New York Giants (Sunday 1:00)
Week 8: vs. New Orleans (Sunday 1:00)
Week 9: at Kansas City (Sunday Night Football)
Week 10: BYE WEEK
Week 11: vs. Baltimore (Sunday 1:00)
Week 12: at Dallas (Sunday 4:25)
Week 13: at Carolina (Sunday 1:00)
Week 14: vs. Washington (Sunday 1:00)
Week 15: at Detroit (Sunday 1:00)
Week 16: vs. Atlanta (Monday Night Football) 
Week 17: vs. Las Vegas (Sunday 1:00)
Week 18: at New Orleans (TBD)

I think I just went 0-for-18. We’ll find out Wednesday, Pewter People.