What is the Bucs nightmare scenario for the 2026 season?

The Bucs 2025 campaign started with a ton of promise. They started the season 6-2 with a win over the eventual Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks . They went into their Bye Week with the expectation they would rest up and come out of it ready for a tough slate of games but would finish the season 2-7 after the break and lose their division title.

Not many things could be seen as much more of a worst-case scenario for the Bucs, but what could be worse in 2026? Bleacher Report's Brad Gagnon laid out the worst-case scenario for every NFL team, including the Bucs. For Tampa Bay, it centers around a duo of things that could unfold.

Gagnon writes, "Baker Mayfield regresses, indicating that his decline in 2025 wasn't simply a down year, and the Bucs pick up where they left off with a 2-7 run to close out the 2025 campaign. " Baker Mayfield is heading into a critical year on multiple fronts, perhaps the biggest being on paper, literally. He is set to be a free agent in 2027, and Jason Licht and the rest of the Bucs front office remain steadfast in him sticking around for the foreseeable future.

However, if the team falters out of the gate, that may not be the case. Albeit, it would need him to really fall out of the gate. But crazier things have happened.