The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Giants are both in tough situations as they head into the final seven games of the season.
The Giants (2-8) are struggling after losing five games in a row. Coach Brian Daboll made the decision to bench expensive quarterback Daniel Jones and will start Tommy DeVito, a New Jersey native, for Sunday’s game against the Buccaneers (4-6) at MetLife Stadium.
The Buccaneers aren’t making big changes but know they need to start winning again. Despite losing four straight games and five out of their last six, they still have a chance to make the playoffs.
Tampa Bay has lost to teams like Baltimore, Atlanta, Kansas City, and San Francisco during their losing streak. But they are still only 1 1/2 games behind the Falcons in the NFC South.
A win over the Giants would put them just one game behind Atlanta (6-5), and their remaining games are against Las Vegas (2-8), the Los Angeles Chargers (7-3), Dallas (3-7), New Orleans (4-7), and two against Carolina (3-7).
Bucs center Graham Barton said the team understands the standings and knows they must make a push.
“There’s not like, ‘Well, it’s early in the season,’ anymore. It’s now or never, so we’re going to – obviously we want to win every game, but the playoffs for us really starts now,” he said. “We have to win and we have to win now.”
DeVito, who is known as “Tommy Cutlets” and played last season after Jones and backup Tyrod Taylor were injured, will now start. He was 3-3 as a rookie free agent starter out of Illinois. This is why the confident young quarterback has been chosen to start over veteran backup Drew Lock.
“If you don’t enjoy going out there, you don’t play with the same kind of passion that you would if you did, so really just trying to keep everybody’s high spirits up, enjoy it, and just bring energy when I’m out there,” DeVito said.
