The Tampa Bay Buccaneers face the Atlanta Falcons in a pivotal NFC South showdown on Thursday Night Football. Tampa Bay enters the game tied with the Carolina Panthers at 7-6, while Atlanta struggles through a difficult season. Baker Mayfield leads a battered Buccaneers offense, fighting through injuries and inconsistency. Across the field, Kirk Cousins directs an Atlanta squad missing much of its offensive arsenal, leaving the Falcons searching for answers.

Read – Sports Talk Florida

Mayfield vs Cousins: Quarterback Duel

Baker Mayfield refuses to back down despite his offensive line’s struggles and a depleted receiving corps. He pushes the ball downfield, looking for explosive plays to spark Tampa Bay’s attack. Kirk Cousins, meanwhile, shoulders the responsibility of keeping Atlanta competitive without his usual weapons. The quarterback duel sets the tone for a game that demands resilience and creativity from both sides.

Defensive Struggles Define the Matchup

Neither defense has dominated this season. Tampa Bay experiments with veteran linebacker Jason Pierre-Paul, hoping the former Super Bowl champion still has fuel left in the tank. Atlanta’s defense faces its own challenges, often giving up big plays at critical moments. Both units must rise to the occasion if their teams want to stay alive in the playoff race.

Broadcast Information

Fans can catch the Buccaneers vs Falcons matchup live on Prime Video as part of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package. Radio coverage can be heard free nationally on WestWood One Sports.

Tampa Bay’s Path Forward

The Buccaneers control their destiny as defending NFC South champions. A win over Atlanta provides momentum heading into next week’s road clash against Carolina. Tampa Bay knows that victories in December matter most, and Thursday night offers a launching pad for a playoff push. If Mayfield and the defense deliver, the Buccaneers can solidify their grip on the division and silence doubters.

by Carter Brantley

While Charleston managed to keep things close throughout the game, the USF Bulls took care of business against the Cougars, sneaking away with a closer-than-expected 81-75 victory.

The name of the game in the 1st half was crashing the boards, as USF held a whopping 16-5 advantage in offensive rebounds.

USF also got their usual scorching start from the sharpshooter Joseph Pinion, as he hit 4 straight 3s to begin his night, ending with 15 points in the 1st half on 5-9 shooting from the field.

The bench also contributed mightily, with freshman forward Tristan Beckford contributing 12 points during the period, doing most of his work on the interior but sprinkling in a 3 for good measure.

Beckford and big man Izaiyah Nelson contributed 6 boards each to start the game, with Nelson and fellow forward Daimion Collins combining to play some staunch defense on the interior despite facing a pair of 7 footers from the Cougars.

Charleston only managed 14 points in the paint during the 1st half.

Their usually stellar defense flexed its might in forcing turnovers, with the Cougars committing 7 turnovers over the 1st half and some change.

While they went off and on from their usual full-court-press methods, they went on that run in the 1st half playing their defense straight up, an interesting shift in methodology that seemed to have some success.

The 2nd half was a close contest, with Charleston tying it up at one point with about 14 and a half minutes left in the game and managing to make it quite a good fight off the strength of guard Connor Hickman, who made headlines as he took his fight to retain college eligibility to court over the offseason after playing at Bradley.

Charleston managed to make it tight more or less the whole way through, as the Bulls could never quite put the Cougars away for good, but a late surge with a little under 3 minutes to go put USF ahead for good.

The new football coach Brian Hartline also made an appearance at the beginning of the game, addressing the crowd and giving the usual pep talk that new coaches produce in front of home crowds.

It was well received, as many anticipate the new coach continuing to build on the success that new Auburn coach Alex Golesh established for the program.

The Bulls’ victory over the Cougars took their record to 6-4 for the season, with an undefeated mark at home.

USF’s next matchup is against the 12th-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide next Wednesday at 8 pm, as they travel to Tuscaloosa to face one of their toughest opponents of the season.

Around the conference, the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes have gotten off to a heck of a start in non-conference play, as their 8-1 record entering Wednesday night was the best in the American.

It is going to be difficult to put the Super Bowl on a streaming service.

There was a report from Front Office Sports that “Amazon has its sights set on its next big venture into NFL media rights: the Super Bowl.” Right now, it is highly unlikely that Congress would look kindly at Amazon Prime streaming the Super Bowl leaving over-the-air TV but the landscape of TV is changing rapidly and in the 2030s attitudes might change. There are not a lot of free TV option left but the NFL produces big ratings for over-the-air TV networks. The last TV drama involving Congress and the NFL took place almost 17 years ago.

On December 29^th, 2008, a New England Patriots-New York Giants contest in East Rutherford, New Jersey became a political football as the game was scheduled to be carried by the NFL Network as an exclusive cablecast. The problem? New England was undefeated and possibly heading to become the NFL’s first undefeated team since 1972 when Miami accomplished the feat. At that time, the channel reached only 43 million cable and satellite homes out of a possible 95 million homes. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry suggested the game be moved to NBC as a Sunday night presentation. But the NFL wanted to keep the game on the NFL Network. Kerry, along with Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, wrote a letter to the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, threatening to reconsider the limited antitrust exemption that the NFL enjoyed thanks to the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act. Following that pressure, the game was shown on CBS and NBC as well as on the NFL Network. Recently, National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that his league by going to Peacock and Amazon Prime is cutting off some fans. Amazon landing the Super Bowl could be problematic.

Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191

Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com