Buccaneers cornerback Zyon McCollum will miss the rest of the regular season.
The Buccaneers announced on Monday that McCollum has been placed on injured reserve. He injured his hip in last Thursday’s loss to the Falcons and he will be eligible to return if the Bucs should advance to a second playoff game.
McCollum started all 13 games he played this season. He had 65 tackles and an interception in those appearances.
The Bucs filled his roster spot by signing linebacker Anthony Walker off of the Colts’ practice squad. He has not appeared in any games this season, but has played in 99 games for the Dolphins, Browns, and Colts over the last eight seasons.
The Panthers went into Sunday’s game in New Orleans with a clear path to the NFC South title.
A win over the Saints would allow them to clinch the division by beating the Buccaneers at home in Week 16 and it looked like they were on their way to getting that win when they went up by 10 points in the third quarter. The Saints scored the next 13 points, however, and Charlie Smyth’s field goal with seconds to play handed the Panthers a 20-17 loss.
It was a painful way to end a game, but the Panthers still play the Bucs twice in the final three weeks and defensive lineman Derrick Brown noted that leaves the team with a chance to make a happier ending to the season.
“It’s great to still have everything in front of us, right? Like you’ve got to put this s--t behind us and get back to work,” Brown said, via the team’s website. “You can’t sit here and suck on this because you’ve got to go back to work and get ready for tomorrow and get ready to play Tampa Bay next weekend. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for us. I mean, we’ve got to go out here and we got to get it now. I mean, it is what it is. It’s been that way since Day 1, right? We started off 1-3, and you know it’s the same mentality, right? Nothing has come easy for us this season. So I mean now we’ve got to go back and go to work.”
The Panthers have alternated wins and losses in their last eight games and that’s kept the division up for grabs while the Bucs have struggled. Continuing that trend will get them into the playoffs, but no one around the team would mind a winning streak to close out the regular season.
Thursday night’s loss to the Falcons dropped the Buccaneers out of first place in the NFC South, and for the first time this season the Panthers are in the NFL playoff picture and the Buccaneers are out.
Despite all that, the Bucs remain the betting favorites to win the division.
The current betting odds have the Bucs as the -130 favorites to win the division, and the Panthers as the +110 underdogs. It’s a two-team race, as the Falcons and Saints are both mathematically eliminated.
The NFL schedule makers gave us plenty of intrigue in the NFC South, as the Buccaneers and Panthers play against each other in Week 16 and again in Week 18. If either team sweeps those two games, that team wins the NFC South regardless of what happens in any other game. The NFC South race is still wide open, and likely will remain open into the regular-season finale.
As the fourth overall pick, Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts Sr. entered the league in 2021 with ridiculously high expectations. Despite becoming the first rookie tight end since Mike Ditka to generate 1,000-plus receiving yards as a rookie (Brock Bowers has since matched the feat), Pitts has failed to meet the bar that his draft pedigree and potential established.
That changed on Thursday night, with a prime-time breakout only four games away from his first crack at free agency: 11 catches, 166 yards, three touchdowns.
It was his first 100-yard game of the season, although in recent weeks he’d been getting closer and closer. In Week 13, Pitts had a then-season-high 82 yards on seven catches against the Jets. In Week 14, he gained 90 yards on six catches.
Also, the Week 15 game resulted in his first 100-yard receiving performance since December 26, 2021.
After last night, the past may not matter. He showed what he can do, under the right circumstances. And as Bill Walsh once said, if a guy can do something once, he can be coached to do it consistently.
So here’s the question. What will happen when Pitts becomes available? Will a team be sufficiently enthralled by last night’s showing that it shows him the kind of money most never dreamed he’d earn?
The Buccaneers, who witnessed it the hard way, may want to put him at the top of the wish list. If it turns out to be Mike Evans’s final year in Tampa, that money and cap space could go to Pitts.
Really, any team with a need at the position should consider Pitts. Any team without a need should evaluate him as a potential upgrade.
On Thursday night, everyone saw what Kyle Pitts can do. Of the 32 teams in the NFL, one of them likely will decide to pay him a lot of money in the hopes that he’ll do it again.
And again. And again.
Todd Bowles hasn’t been known for fiery press conferences over the years, but the Buccaneers head coach had one on Thursday night after his team blew a 14-point lead to the Falcons and lost for the fifth time in their last six games.
Bowles called the team’s performance “inexcusable” in a profanity-laced excoriation of their effort against Atlanta and said in a Friday morning videoconference that his comments weren’t meant to send a message to the locker room. Bowles said he sent the same message to the team in their postgame meeting and that everything he said on Thursday night was “honest, raw, and right off the top.”
Bowles also said that the response to the loss wasn’t because of any thoughts he might be having about how the team’s recent slide could impact his own job security.
“I don’t think I worry about it at all,” Bowles said. “It doesn’t creep into the locker room. Players play and coaches coach. I got more years behind me than I do ahead of me. I think we’re in a situation where we’re right back in it and our only focus is on winning a ball game.”
It’s too late in the season to make any significant changes to the personnel or schemes in Tampa, so the current players are going to have to play better and the current coaches are going to have to coach better in order for them to hold off the Panthers for a playoff berth that would quiet most of the questions about Bowles’ future in Tampa.
