The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were eliminated from the playoffs on Sunday night with a last-second 23-20 loss to the Washington Commanders in the Wild Card Round and thus will now turn their attention to matters regarding the 2025 season. That includes the NFL Draft, in which the Buccaneers are slotted to pick 19th overall in the first round.
The first 18 spots in the first round of the draft were set in place at the end of the regular season, and now five of the six picks from 19 to 24 have been determined from the Wild Card game results on Saturday and Sunday. The sixth will go to the loser of the Monday night game between the Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams.
Tampa Bay finished the regular season at 10-7, putting them in a group of four teams that had that record and lost in the Wild Card round. The first tiebreaker for draft spots is strength of schedule (SOS), which is measured by the combined win-loss percentage of all the opponents a team faced in the just-concluded season. The team with the lowest SOS gets the highest pick among those tied teams, and so on. The Rams, one of those 10-7 teams, is yet to play in the Wild Card round but the result of their Monday night game against Minnesota won't affect the Bucs' draft slot. If the Rams lose, their SOS of .505 will put them in the 22nd spot. If the Vikings lose, their 14-3 record in the regular season will put them in the 24th spot.
Meanwhile, the Buccaneers, Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers all had identical 10-7 records and SOS marks of .502. In such a situation with three-or-more clubs from different conferences remain tied, the first step is to eliminate all but one team from each conference. By that procedure, the Steelers are eliminated and get the 21st pick but they beat Denver in Week Two. After that, the Buccaneers and Broncos go into a two-team tiebreaker and that hinges on Denver's win in Tampa in Week Three. That puts Denver 20th and the Buccaneers 19th.
The Tennessee Titans earned the first pick in the draft with a 3-14 record and a SOS of .522. The Cleveland Browns (3-14), New York Giants (3-14), New England Patriots (4-13) and Jacksonville Jaguars (4-13) round out the top five.
The final eights spots in the draft will be partially determined by when teams are eliminated from the playoffs, with the teams that drop out in the Divisional Round getting picks 25-28, the teams that lose the Conference Championship games getting picks 29 and 30, the Super Bowl loser getting pick 31 and the league champions getting pick 32. As is the case with the first 24 picks, ties between teams with identical records are broken by strength of schedule.
As part of a tied segment of teams in the draft order, the Buccaneers will rotate to different spots within that segment throughout the second through seventh rounds. The team that picks first in the first round in any tied segment then moves to the last pick of that segment in the second round, with all the other teams moving up one spot. That process continues from round to round. Thus, Tampa Bay will pick 21st in the second round and 20th in the third round, and so on.
Barring a trade, the Buccaneers will pick 19th in the first round for the third time in team history, all within the last decade. Tampa Bay used that slot in 2017 to select tight end O.J. Howard, then again in 2023 to take defensive lineman Calijah Kancey.
The Buccaneers currently own their own pick in Rounds 1-5 and Round 7. They traded their 2025 sixth-round pick to Detroit last March as part of the deal that sent cornerback Carlton Davis to the Lions for a 2024 third-round pick that was eventually used to select wide receiver Jalen McMillan.
