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Buccaneers DeskThe Lab Report

Buccaneers are 3-6 but their snaps say 4.7 wins, and the clock is costing them

Tampa Bay sits 12th in the conference on the real table and ninth on the deserved one, with the worst clock management score in the league.

The Lab ReportBuccaneers4.7Deserved wins · The Lab
By Buccaneers Desk, Pigskin NightlyNov 12, 5:10 PM ET2 min read

The most surprising number in the Lab on the Buccaneers is a positive one. Tampa Bay is 3-6, yet its snaps say the team has earned 4.7 wins and 4.3 losses. The next four sections show where that gap comes from and what it means in Detroit on Sunday, Nov. 22.

4.7: the snaps say the Bucs are a game and a half better

The Buccaneers' record is 3-6, which puts them 12th in the conference. Our deserved standings put them ninth, with 4.7 deserved wins against 4.3 deserved losses. The difference is 1.7 wins of bad luck.

That is the gap between out of the playoff field on the real table and in it on the snaps. A team can sit in that spot for a while, but the real table is the only one that pays out in January. Tampa Bay needs the underlying numbers to start turning into actual wins.

Deserved Standings

3.8: the market has been too low on Tampa Bay

Over nine games the betting market expected Tampa Bay to lose by 2.1 points per game. The snaps say the Bucs deserved to win by 1.7, and the real margin has been 2.7 points per game in their favor. That puts the gap between snaps and market at 3.8 points, the fifth-largest in the league for a team the market has underrated.

The Buccaneers are 4-4-1 against the closing spread, so the market has not been badly wrong on any single night. It has been slightly low on average. This week's line is Detroit by 3.5 with a total of 47.5, context for how the market sees a road game against the Lions and nothing more.

Market vs Snaps

20 of 99: the clock is where the points leak

Todd Bowles has the lowest Clock IQ score in the league, 20 out of 99, 32nd of 32. The two-minute drill shows it in plain numbers: six drives, three points, against 4.5 expected points for those drives. That is 1.5 points left on the field.

Timeouts are part of the problem. Tampa Bay burns 1.22 per game, while the league average is 0.75, a difference of 0.47 every week. In a game the market prices near a field goal, those spent timeouts leave the Bucs short of time in the last two minutes of a close game.

Clock IQ

33rd to 84th percentile: the cheapest receiver is playing the most

Tampa Bay ranks third of 32 in value for the money spent. Wide receiver Tez Johnson carries a cap hit of $1.04 million, in the 33rd percentile for pay, and plays 43% of the snaps, which is the 84th percentile. He is the best bargain on the roster.

The other end of the table is Baker Mayfield. His $34.02 million cap hit sits in the 90th percentile for pay, while his playing time sits in the 42nd. The Bucs also have $26.4 million of cap tied to players not playing, including $4.9 million on injured reserve. Of the cap, 88% is on the field.

Paid vs Played

Tampa Bay plays at the Detroit Lions in Week 11, with kickoff at 1:00 PM ET on Fox. The two things to track are whether the Bucs' deserved record starts to show up in the standings and how many timeouts they have left for the final two minutes.

How this was reported. Every number in this piece comes from the play-by-play, drive, injury and snap data Pigskin Nightly collects for every game. EPA (expected points added) is from the open nflverse model. We do not use anonymous sources or invent quotes. Read how we write; spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it in the open.