The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Atlanta Falcons combined for 44 points the last time they met – a 27-17 Falcon victory at Raymond James Stadium last Nov. 9 – and that represented a defensive struggle compared to recent series history.

INFOGRAPHIC: BUCS VS. FALCONS SERIES HISTORY

Prior to that, the Bucs and Falcons had combined for 70 points in Week Three of the 2014 season, albeit the majority of those belonging to Atlanta in a 56-14 runaway. The two teams' second meeting of 2013 was a 69-point affair, this one going to Tampa Bay by a 41-28 margin. The first matchup of the '13 season was a little closer but still high-scoring, with Atlanta taking a 31-23 decision. In fact, the last seven Bucs-Falcons get-togethers have produced an average of 56 points. With the fourth and 13th-ranked scoring offenses about to meet on Sunday in the Georgia Dome, expect another round of fireworks to open the 2015 series.

If you combine all 43 games the Buccaneers and Falcons have played against each other, Tampa Bay comes out on top in the scoring department, with 906 points to Atlanta's 863. However, the Falcons have recently taken the lead in the more important win-loss category, as their sweep last season flipped the leaderboard and put them up, 22-21. Last year, before the second, tie-breaking meeting, Tampa Bay and Atlanta had the most-often-contested tied series between any two teams in the NFL. The Buccaneers are hoping to bring that distinction back to reality with a win in Week Eight.

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What the Buccaneers obviously do not want is a repeat of their last trip to Atlanta, in which WR Julio Jones caught two TD passes and WR Devin Hester scored on both a 20-yard end-around and a 62-yard punt return. Atlanta led 35-0 at halftime and 56-0 after three quarters in what would prove to be its highest-scoring game in the entire series, which dates back to 1977. The rematch in Tampa in November was far more competitive, with the Buccaneers taking a 17-16 lead in the fourth quarter on an Austin-Seferian-Jenkins touchdown catch. However, an illegal-contact call on CB Johnthan Banks on a third-down incompletion set up a Roddy White touchdown catch on the next play and Atlanta scored the final 11 points in the game to win by 10.

In the early years, the two teams went back and forth, each winning six times from 1977-93.  Then the streaks began, a trio of two-game runs for Atlanta (1994-95, 2003-04, 2006), interrupted by Buccaneer runs of six, three and three games.  That gave Tampa Bay a comfortable six-game cushion until the Falcons promptly ripped off five in a row from 2008-11.  Lately, it's gone back to a back-and-forth affair, with three consecutive season splits from 2011-13 before last year's sweep by Atlanta.

Tampa Bay's Week 17 win in Atlanta in 2012 – against a 13-2 Falcons team that did not rest its starters despite having the NFC's first-overall playoff seed locked down – was viewed as a boost for the Buccaneers heading into 2013.  However, the Bucs lost their first eight en route to a 4-12 finish that prompted the hiring of a new coaching staff and a new general manager.  The Falcons also struggled to a 4-12 finish in 2013, thanks in large part to a rash of injuries.

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The two teams first met late in 1977, when the Buccaneers were still in the midst of the franchise-opening 26-game losing streak that spanned most of their first two seasons.  Atlanta won, 17-0, but the Buccaneers would get their first victory in New Orleans in two weeks later and close out with two in a row.  Early in 1978, Tampa Bay was clearly turning a corner, and a Week Four meeting at Tampa Stadium produced a 14-9 Bucs victory, just the team's second ever win at home.

The Bucs were 7-2 and on their way to their first playoff berth a year later when the Falcons, who would finish just 6-10, pulled of a 17-14 upset.  Contrastingly, in 1981, the Bucs made the playoffs for a second time by winning four of their last five to finish 9-76, and the closest decision in that string was a 24-23 home win over Atlanta.  The Falcons led by six in the fourth quarter before Doug Williams hit Kevin House for a 71-yard go-ahead touchdown, and the win was sealed when Atlanta kicker Mick Luckhurst missed a 45-yard field goal with four seconds to play.  "We just got beat today by a football team that out-executed us," said Atlanta Head Coach Leeman Bennett after the game.  "I can't say anything but good things about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  They are a fine football team.  They executed when they had to and scored when they had to.  I can't do anything but heap praise on them and their staff."

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Five years later, Bennett would be head coach of the Buccaneers, as he replaced the retired John McKay in 1985.  The Bucs won just four of 32 games during Bennett's tenure, and a 23-20 loss to the Falcons in September of 1986 was the first of two straight defeats in overtime, the only time that has happened in franchise history.  Not surprisingly, the Bucs had a new coach, Ray Perkins, in place to start the 1987 season and the very first thing his team did was demolish the Falcons on opening day, 48-10.  QB Steve DeBerg, in his first of two stints with Tampa Bay (he would also later suit up briefly for the Falcons), threw five touchdown passes in that contest, a Buc record that would later be tied (by Brad Johnson and Josh Freeman) but never surpassed.  Coincidentally, Atlanta was also the victim in the Buccaneers' last win under Perkins, late in the 1990 season.  The Bucs won that game, 23-17, on a 35-yard touchdown pass from Vinny Testaverde to Mark Carrier with 39 seconds left, but it wasn't enough to save Perkins' job as the team used a late bye week to replace him with Richard Williamson.

If there were hurt feelings by those two Buccaneer wins under Perkins, they escalated in the early '90s when both teams brought in colorful head coaches, Jerry Glanville in Atlanta and Sam Wyche in Tampa Bay.  Glanville and Wyche had already crossed paths for years in the old AFC Central, with Glanville piloting the Houston Oilers and Wyche at the helm of the Cincinnati Bengals, and there was apparently no love lost between the two.  Wyche's Bengals running up the score in a 61-7 win over Glanville's Oilers in 1989 may have had something to do with that.  Glanville's Falcons drubbed Williamson's Buccaneers, 43-7, in 1991, and then poured it on again the next year in a 35-7 victory in Tampa.  That was Wyche's first year as head coach in Tampa, and during the offseason he had cut linebacker Jesse Solomon, who took the move personally.  Solomon ended up with the Falcons and Glanville fanned the flames of the rivalry by letting Solomon play on offense late in the blowout, even giving him two handoffs that he turned into 12 yards.

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Deion Sanders also played on offense late in that game as another dig at Wyche by Glanville, but when the teams met again the next year, Sanders was prominently featured for a different reason.  The Hall of Fame-bound cornerback was surprisingly beaten for two long touchdowns by Bucs WR Horace Copeland, keying a 31-24 Tampa Bay win.  The Buccaneers' rise in the second half of the 1990s was not matched by a renaissance in Atlanta, which led to Tampa Bay handily winning the last three matchups before the two teams became fellow NFC South denizens in 2002.

After the South was formed, the Falcons and Bucs evenly split the next 24 meetings before last year's Atlanta sweep.  The Bucs swept in 2002, 2005 and 2007, each time helping propel Tampa Bay to division titles.  Atlanta swept in 2006, 2009 and 2010, though only that final year was followed by a Falcons division title.  The Falcons have 10 nine of the last 13 in the series.

Other than last year's win in Tampa, the best games in the series since the creation of the NFC South, at least from the Buccaneers' perspective, occurred in 2002, 2005 and 2012.  In '02, the Buccaneers were on their way to their first Super Bowl title, but they had a high-profile December matchup with the streaking Falcons and their new star quarterback, Michael Vick.  The Bucs' defense completely stifled Vick in that game, especially on the ground, and won 34-10 to essentially wrap up the division title.  In '05, the Bucs were on the verge of following out of division title contention – and maybe the playoffs altogether – when they went to overtime against the Falcons at Raymond James Stadium in Week 16.  A fumble on the opening kickoff in the extra period set Atlanta up for a chip shot field goal to win it but DE Dewayne White blocked the kick and the Bucs eventually won with their own field goal, 27-24, at the very end of overtime.  In 2012, the Buccaneers stumbled into the Georgia Dome in Week 17, having lost five in a row after that 6-4 start, but finished strong with a 22-17 win over the division champs.

Bucs-Falcons Game-by-Game Record:

Series Notes:

• Overall Series: Atlanta leads, 22-21
• Bucs' Home Record: 13-10
• Bucs' Road Record: 8-12
• Current Streak: Lose 2 (2014)
• Buccaneers' Longest Winning Streak: 6 (1997-2003)
• Falcons' Longest Winning Streak: 5 (2008-10)
• Regular Season Point Total: Buccaneers 906, Falcons 863
• Most Points in a Game, Tampa Bay: Buccaneers 48-10 (1987)
• Most Points in a Game, Atlanta: Falcons 56-14 (2014)
• Most Points, both teams: Falcons 56-14 (2014)
• Fewest Points in a Game, Buccaneers: Falcons 17-0 (1977)
• Fewest Points in a Game, Falcons: Buccaneers 27-0 (2004)
• Fewest Points in a Game, both teams: Falcons 14-3 (2006)