The (4-9) Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the (8-5) Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football. Kickoff is at 8:30 PM ET on ESPN. The Falcons are 6.5-point favorites and the over/under is set at 48.5, pointing to a 27.5-21.0 victory for Atlanta.
If the Falcons win and move to 9-5, they will have a temporary hold on the sixth seed in the NFC, ahead of three teams at 8-6. Fortunately for Atlanta, they’ve already defeated all three of those teams (Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, Seattle Seahawks) in the regular season, so they would have to win just one more game to clinch a playoff spot.
The New England Patriots don’t care which team wins this game because they’ve defeated both of them and any result would be neutral for the Patriots strength of schedule and victory. It could be argued that they want the Buccaneers to win for the sake of the San Francisco 49ers’ 2018 second round draft pick.
Use this as the open thread for discussion.