The Bucs didn't need a single completion, and the NFC South should worry

The Buccaneers beat Atlanta 16-0 on Sunday without completing a pass, and I'm tired of hearing that the rain did it. The rain was real. So were 56 runs for 324 yards, a franchise record, and nobody falls into 324 rushing yards because the ball is slippery.

Bucky Irving carried it 27 times for 170 yards and the only touchdown. Kenny Gainwell carried it 25 times for 140. Baker Mayfield, in his second game back from a fractured thumb, threw it three times and completed none of them. The AP recap on ESPN says Tampa Bay is the first team to finish a game without a completion since the Buffalo Bills on Sept. 29, 1974, which had been the only time it happened in the Super Bowl era. The old team rushing record was 283 yards, set at Philadelphia in 2015. They beat it by 41 in a downpour.

I want to be careful about the part I don't know. Nobody has said whether Tampa's coaches called it that way because of the weather, because of the thumb, or because the runs just kept working. I'd love to know. I'll only tell you what the sheet says, which is that the Bucs held the ball for 35:16 and Atlanta never made them stop.

Here's the best argument against me, and it's a good one. Tampa's defense won that game at least as much as the run game did. Alex Anzalone picked off Michael Penix Jr. twice, Zyon McCollum and Jacob Parrish got one each, and Parrish's came on a fourth-down throw at the Tampa Bay 17. Sixteen points off four takeaways isn't an offense showing off, and the Bucs gave one away when Irving fumbled a lateral out of the end zone from the Atlanta 18. All true.

But both teams played on the same wet field. Atlanta ran it 28 times for 99 yards, with Bijan Robinson at 76 on 19 carries, while Penix threw it 24 times. Same rain, same grass, and one team turned its run game into a record. And after Irving's 4-yard score made it 16-0 with 3:47 left in the third, Tampa kept handing it off into a defense that knew exactly what was coming, and it still worked. That's the part I'd watch on film twice.

I spent a lot of years wishing for a game like that. When I played, the best afternoons were the ones where the other side knew the run was coming, lined up for it, and couldn't stop it anyway. You don't get many. Most weeks somebody gets beat on third down and you're throwing again.

Tampa Bay is 3-5, and I'm not going to pretend that's a good team. It's also won three of four after starting 0-4 and sits a half-game behind Carolina in the NFC South, which tells me the division is wide open for anybody with a run game it can lean on in November. The Bucs play at Chicago next Sunday night. My dare to the Bears is simple: make Mayfield beat you. If they line up and let Tampa run it 50 times instead, the forecast won't be the excuse this time.

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