CBS Sports: Buccaneers Shock Cowboys in Wild Card Round

The 2022 NFL playoffs are finally here. After a bumpy regular season, the Bucs were able to sneak into the playoffs after winning the NFC South and are set to play the Dallas Cowboys in the wild card round on Monday Night Football. The matchup is a rematch of the opening game of the season that saw Tampa Bay go into Dallas and come out with a 19-3 victory.

With the matchup set, reporters have been making their predictions on who will come out of wild card weekend. John Breech of CBS Sports made his predictions for all the games and shockingly picked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to upset the Dallas Cowboys on Monday night.

"The Cowboys usually wait until the postseason to fall apart, but this year, it seems they've started things a little bit early. Dallas lost two of its final four regular-season games and big reason that happened is because Dak Prescott has apparently forgotten how to play football.

"Since returning from his right thumb injury in Week 7, Prescott just hasn't been the same quarterback and although you'd think he would be slowly improving each week, that simply hasn't been the case. Since Week 12, Prescott has thrown 11 interceptions, which is more than any other QB in the NFL over that span.

"Thanks to those 11 interceptions, Prescott finished tied for the NFL lead with 15 picks on the season, which I'm only pointing out because it makes him the FIRST QB IN NFL HISTORY to miss at least five games and STILL lead the league interceptions. That's up there with "who can eat the most tubs of butter in 90 seconds" on the list of records you don't ever want to break.

"Basically, on one side of this game, you have a quarterback who can't stop throwing interceptions and on the other side, you have the most successful NFL quarterback of all-time: Tom Brady. If Brady could have hand-picked his opponent for the wild-card round, I'm guessing he would have picked the Cowboys and that's mainly because if there's one team the Bucs will be extremely confident in beating, it's Dallas. For one, the Buccaneers already beat the Cowboys this season, and two, Brady has NEVER LOST TO THE COWBOYS IN HIS CAREER (7-0).

"Also, this game is being played in Tampa Bay, which is notable, because they have a grass field in Tampa and Dallas tends to struggle on grass for some reason. The Cowboys have played five games on grass this season and they've gone 1-4 in those games. They lost to the Eagles, Commanders, Jaguars and Packers, and their only win came against a Titans team that was forced to start a quarterback (Josh Dobbs) who had only been on the roster for nine days. Even then, the Cowboys still had trouble putting Tennessee away (The game was 17-13 in the fourth quarter).

"From a defensive standpoint, the Cowboys surrendered an average of 27.2 points in their five games played on grass. In the 12 games that weren't played on grass, the Cowboys surrendered just 17.1 points per game, which is a huge 10.1-point difference.

"On paper, this game feels like a mismatch, but Tom Brady doesn't believe in paper so I'm going to ignore the talent disparity and just go with the team that I trust more right now and that's the Buccaneers."

This game will be a doozy and everyone knows how difficult it is to beat the same team twice in one season in the NFL. However, both teams are very different than they were at the beginning of the season. The case could be made that Dallas was a better team then than they have been down the stretch here as of late. For the Bucs, their offense has muddled through the regular season but has shown signs of life when they are at full strength. The Bucs have also dealt with a myriad of injuries this season and hope to return a lot of those players this week for the wild card game.

I look at this game as a true toss-up. Whoever scores last and controls the turnover battle should be the team moving on to face the Philadelphia Eagles in the next round.

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