The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have a long history of playing the Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams. That history includes two playoff clashes in 1979 and 1999, both very defensive, low-scoring games won by the Rams. It also includes just eight Bucs victories in a whopping 25 tries.
That’s a pretty extraordinary amount of games for teams that have never been in the same division. And for the last four ways, those games have resulted in losses for the Bucs.
Some obvious, some excruciatingly close, but they were all losses nonetheless. 2014’s 19-17 loss on a last-second field goal was particularly bad, most of the difference being made by a single Josh McCown interception in the Rams red zone.
The fact that the Bucs keep losing to this specific team is pretty weird, given the fact that the Rams keep winning just seven or six games every year. Then again, the Bucs have only managed to win as many as six games once in the past four seasons, so they are at least a little better on paper.
But they shouldn’t be, really. The Rams have had essentially the same team for years on end: no quarterback, a decent defensive line and a few talented defensive backs. And that’s it. There’s no great mass of talent there, nor are there some spectacularly hard to figure out schemes or even consistent performance.
You’d think that all of this would have to change at some point. That the Bucs would start beating them, as they last did in 2010 — incidentally also the last time the Bucs even had a winning season. It’d be nice if they did, because it’s getting really tiresome to keep losing to the Rams every. single. year.