These Trends Suggest Backing Tom Brady, Buccaneers at Home vs. Eagles

The reigning Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers missed out on earning a first-round bye and will start the playoffs off against the Philadelphia Eagles at home.

Tom Brady and company led the Bucs to a franchise record of 13 regular-season wins and snagged the first NFC South title for the team since Jeff Garcia was the quarterback. The Bucs won seven of their last eight games and did so with injuries and other drama issues. The cherry on top of that drama was Antonio Brown throwing a temper tantrum and essentially retired in the middle of a game.

It isn’t all bad news though, as the Bucs are getting healthy at some key positions heading into the first round. Leonard Fournette is eligible to return from injured reserve and the team could soon see Lavonte David, Shaq Barrett, and Jason Pierre-Paul come back as well. The former will help the Bucs passing attack open up and the latter to vastly improve their defense. 

Ultimately, this team’s success is tied to the performance of Brady. This will be Brady’s 46th career playoff start. Brady has a tremendous 34-11 record in those games and will hope to continue his postseason success on Sunday. 

While Brady is no stranger to the playoffs, he doesn’t make a lot of appearances in the wild-card round. In fact, in 46 playoff games, Brady has played only five in the wild-card. In those five games, Brady-led teams are 3-2 against the spread (ATS). One of those five games was during last season’s NFC wild-card when he played on the road in the first round for the first time in his career. The Bucs beat Washington in that spot 31-23.

This year, they have the luxury of playing in the wild-card game on their home field once again. This is good for them if you believe their 6-2 ATS record at home as a favorite (they were favored in every home game this year). They are also 7-5 ATS coming off a win and 6-6 in conference action.

At home, the Buccaneers are the second-best scoring offense in the NFL at 33.3 points per game. Their defense does play better at home but the offense has had enough firepower to make up for it most weeks. 

As of this writing, the Buccaneers are 9-point favorites at WynnBET Sportsbook with a total of 49.