Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Atlanta Falcons
- Game Time: Sunday, 12:00 pm CT (FOX)
- Who Needs to Win: Falcons
As previously stated, the Vikings no longer control their own destiny, and they need some help getting into the playoffs. One team that could help them by losing is the Bucs. But now that Tampa owns a head-to-head victory over the purple and gold, they would need to lose a lot during the next three weeks.
Since the Bucs own that tiebreaker over Minnesota and they already have a two-game lead over the Vikings in the NFC standings, it would take a three-game swing for Mike Zimmer’s team to overtake Tampa in the NFC playoff picture.
That could start this week if the Falcons can knock off the Bucs and Minnesota can beat the Bears. If those two things can happen, it would come down to the last two weeks for Minnesota to see if they can end the season with a better record than Tampa Bay.
The bad news is that the Falcons have lost back-to-back games coming into this week. Strangely, these division opponents play each other twice in the final three games of the year, so it will be interesting to see how these two teams handle their first head-to-head game of the season.