What’s The Floor For The Bucs’ Record in 2024?

Now that the Bucs schedule has been released, Las Vegas has released the betting lines for each game the team has in 2024. Tampa Bay is favored in seven of their 17 matchups. This is a jump up from last year when they were favored in just two.

Adding up the Bucs’ odds of winning in each contest shows that they are predicted to win 7.88 games next year, which would be a step back from their nine wins in 2023. It also shows a little value for those who may want to bet the over on the Vegas’ 7.5-win total prediction.

But these lines can also give us a peek into Tampa Bay’s ceiling and floor for the 2024 season.

Based on the implied odds of each game we can determine the odds of each possible win total (0-17), and from there determine what minimum number of wins make up the team’s floor (10th percentile) and ceiling (90th percentile).

Implied Odds Of The Bucs Winning Each Game

Here are the implied odds of Tampa Bay winning each game this upcoming year.

I pulled the “best lines” regarding betting lines from Rotowire and pulled the Vegas edge out.

Bucs are favored in 7 games in 2024

Finding The Cumulative Odds Of Each Win Total

The odds Tampa Bay wins a specific number of games are listed below:

Odds the Bucs win a specific number of games

Based on this we can see that Tampa Bay’s odds of winning four or less games are just 4.32%. That creates a reasonable “floor” as anything less would be outside two standard deviations from the mean.

Conversely, based off of this the team has only a 3.49% chance of winning more than 11 games, creating that as a reasonable “ceiling.” That leaves a seven-win spread between the two. Here is a graphical representation of the likelihood of the Tampa Bay winning each number of games or less.

Bucs Are More Likely To Reach Ceiling Than Floor

Looking at the difference between their 7.88 implied win total and the now-established ceiling and there is a closer relationship between the implied total and the ceiling (3.12) than the relationship between the implied win total and the floor (3.88). This means the odds Tampa Bay wins somewhere between seven and 11 games is more likely to occur than the team winning between four and seven games.

That’s good news on paper, Pewter People.

Implied Win Totals For The Rest Of The NFC South

Bucs RB Rachaad White – Photo by: USA Today

Based on the implied odds of each week of the NFL season, the Bucs are projected to finish second in the NFC South as a result. Keep in mind that Tampa Bay has won the division the last three seasons, but the last two years have been by a razor’s edge.

In 2022, the Bucs went 8-9 and won the NFC South while all three other teams finished 7-10. Last year, Tampa Bay and New Orleans both finished with 9-8 records but the Bucs won due to an NFC tiebreaker.

The Atlanta Falcons are projected to lead the division this year with 9.36 wins. The New Orleans Saints are projected to come in third with 7.39 wins.

And the Carolina Panthers are unsurprisingly projected to come in last. Though the Panthers’ win total projection may surprise some Bucs fans at 6.57.