The Tampa Bay Buccaneers secured their fourth straight NFC South title in Week 18 after beating the New Orleans Saints 27-19 while Mike Evans reached his 11th straight 1,000 receiving yard season. While there was much to do about the events that unfolded during the team’s final regular season game, their attention must now be fully on their next opponent — the Washington Commanders in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.

The Buccaneers get a rematch against their Week 1 opponent from this season — however, both teams have changed since then and will present challenges for the other. In a recent playoff projection piece, CBS Sports’ Will Brinson took a shot at projecting how far each team would go in the playoffs.

While Brinson believes the Commanders are a sneaky team to mess with, he believes that the Bucs’ experience along with it being a home primetime game will give them the slight edge in the Wild Card round.

“I trust Baker at home to get the job done, particularly with a rookie quarterback making his debut,” Brinson wrote. “No knock on Daniels, I just think he’ll have to find some serious late-game magic again if Washington wants to advance, especially if Todd Bowles defense comes to play.”

Brinson thinks that the Bucs will beat the Commanders by six points in this one. However, he has the Buccaneers’ chances of moving on through the divisional round a bit lower. Per Brinson, the Bucs would then face the four-seeded Los Angeles Rams, who he has knocking off the Minnesota Vikings by a field goal in the Wild Card round. Brinson has the Bucs losing by a field goal at home.

“The Bucs’ weakness on the back end of their defense sets up too well for Stafford to wing the ball around, and while the Tampa atmosphere is great, I’m not sure this is the home-field advantage that puts the Rams in the worst possible spot.”

This would be all too similar to what happened to the Buccaneers a season ago. They beat the Philadelphia Eagles in the Wild Card round before narrowly losing to the Detroit Lions in the divisional round.

To make matters worse, this would also mimic what happened back 2021-22 playoffs when the Buccaneers lost to the Rams in the divisional round as well. However, both teams are a bit different than a couple of seasons back as the Bucs are no longer with Tom Brady and the Rams are without future Hall of Fame defensive lineman Aaron Donald.

While it is never fun to get bounced from the playoffs, making it to the divisional round is staying the path and could be considered a win on the season with all the Bucs have had to go through on the injury front.