The 2024 Tampa Bay Buccaneers went into their bye week with a 4-6 record on the heels of a desultory four-game losing streak. The Atlanta Falcons were 6-4 at the time and effectively had a three-game lead in the NFC South race thanks to a head-to-head sweep of the Buccaneers earlier in the season. The Buccaneers had plenty of time to think about their situation during the week off, and the consensus when they returned was that they might have to run the table over the final seven weeks. Quarterback Baker Mayfield urged his team into early adoption of a playoff-mode mindset, just as he had done to good results a year before.

The Buccaneers didn't quite pull off that seven-game season-ending sweep, but they got close and in it was enough. Tampa Bay won six of its last seven and ended up capturing its fourth straight division title with a two-game edge over the Falcons. The one game Tampa Bay lost was at Dallas in Week 16, and it briefly robbed the team of control over its own playoff destiny. In that game, the Buccaneers got the ball back with 100 seconds left on the clock, trailing by two and with a chance to get their nearly flawless kicker into range for a game-winning field goal. Unfortunately, a surprising fumble by dependable running back Rachaad White snuffed out that chance and the Bucs lost, 26-24.

The Bucs won their last two games and watched the Falcons lose twice in Weeks 17 and 18, so the stumble in Dallas was rendered moot. But had Atlanta finished its season with wins over Washington and Carolina – and both games went into overtime – it wouldn't have mattered what Tampa Bay did in its final two outings.

Now that the playoffs have begun, there will be no more second chances, and Mayfield knows that means his team has to be laser-focused for every game that remains, whether it be one more or four more. That starts on Sunday with a visit from the Washington Commanders, who compiled a 12-5 record in a remarkable turnaround season. The Bucs finished the season as the fourth-highest scoring team in the league and the Commanders were fifth, so a high-scoring shootout would be no surprise, but Mayfield said it doesn't matter what type of game it is as long as the Bucs stay on the details.

"Obviously, if you come out on the right side of it, yeah [a shootout is good]," he said. "It's [about] mentality for us, find any way to win, whether the game is a shootout, whether it's low scoring. Make the plays that matter when it counts. It's going to be a full game, [we] have to be locked in. That's just playoff mode, all the little things really matter. The margin for error is just so much smaller at this point in the season and everything counts."

The Bucs have certainly been locked in over the past seven weeks. There have been some nail-biters in that stretch and some blowout wins, but it has all added up to relative dominance. During that 6-1 run the Buccaneers' offense ranks first in yards per game (454.0) and third in points per game (31.9) while the defense ranks second in both yards allowed (273.9) and points allowed (17.0) per game. So the team simply needs to keep preparing the way it has been for the last two months, just with perhaps a little boost in intensity.

"You're excited to get to the playoffs and you're excited for the next opportunity and getting to play this group guaranteed for one more time," said Mayfield. "That's the mentality going into it but other than that, preparation wise you don't want to psych everybody out. You want to handle it the best way you can but just a little bit more attention to detail and ensuring the fact that everybody is on the same page and can handle things correctly."

This is Mayfield's second season at the helm of the Bucs' offense. Last year, the Buccaneers won an opening-round playoff matchup with Philadelphia before falling in a down-to-the-wire game in Detroit in the Divisional Round. Tampa Bay ran for 89 yards in that final game against the Lions, coming off a regular season in which the team ranked dead last in rushing yards for the second week in a row. This year, the Buccaneers finished the season fourth in the NFL with 149.2 rushing yards per game, and it's improvement from 3.44 yards per carry last year to 5.25 this year is the single biggest year-over-year jump in that category in the NFL's Super Bowl era.

When it comes to that slim margin for error in the postseason, it helps if you can rely on running the ball better than your opponents. The Bucs have outrushed their last seven opponents by an average of nearly 125 yards a game. Mayfield thinks that is a reason for confidence that this year's team can advance farther than it did in 2023.

"I'll speak offensively – the biggest difference is the run game," said Mayfield. "When we've needed to run the ball to win games, we've been able to do that. That's a physical mentality and everybody being on the same page with that and understanding that when you get to a certain mode late in the game when you're having to run the clock out, we're able to do that. To me, that's the biggest difference. Skill player-wise in the pass game, yeah, we're connecting quite a bit but the biggest difference is the run game."

Any one play could be the difference on Sunday night. Mayfield hopes the Bucs can prepare to be on the right side of the game's final turning point.