Two years ago, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost to the Houston Texans on a touchdown in the final seconds. On Monday night, Baker Mayfield and the Bucs were the ones to deliver a knockout blow as the clock neared zero.
Mayfield led an 11-play, 80-yard drive capped by Rachaad White’s two-yard touchdown run with six seconds left, and the Buccaneers rallied past the Texans 20-19. In the Bucs’ last visit to Houston, in 2023, CJ Stroud connected with Tank Dell for a TD with six seconds to go to give the Texans a 39-37 win.
“We expected a hard-fought battle, but it’s nice to be on this side of it this time,” Mayfield said.
Mayfield threw for 215 yards and two touchdowns for the Bucs (2-0), and his 15-yard scramble on fourth-and-10 kept the game-winning drive going.
“That was a heck of a job of situational football,” Bucs coach Todd Bowles said. “Baker on the fourth-and-10, using his legs to get the first down. That kind of catapulted everything from there. They did a heck of a job finishing.”
In the Bucs’ opener, Mayfield threw a touchdown pass to Emeka Egbuka with 59 seconds left to give his team a 23-20 win over Atlanta. He joins Doug Williams (1980) as the only Tampa Bay quarterbacks to open a season with two consecutive game-winning drives.
The Texans (0-2) looked to have taken a leap toward victory when they grabbed a 19-14 lead on a 25-yard TD run by Nick Chubb with 2:10 left. Houston went for the two-point conversion but Stroud was sacked. Stroud threw for 207 yards and a touchdown but failed to move the offense effectively for much of the second half.
“We had multiple opportunities to win that game and we didn’t make the plays we needed to make,” Houston coach DeMeco Ryans said.
Houston had scored the opening points of the game when they took an early lead on Collins’ 29-yard TD catch. That score was set up when Stroud connected with Chubb for a 27-yard gain on a screen pass the play before. The Buccaneers tied it at 7-7 when Mayfield threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Ryan Miller on their first possession.
Egbuka had a 15-yard TD catch with about 10 minutes left in the first half to put Tampa Bay up 14-10. Egbuka, a rookie first-round draft pick, became the sixth player since the merger with three TD catches in his first two games.
Houston trailed by four and hadn’t scored in the second half when Riley Dixon’s punt was blocked by Jakob Johnson and the Texans recovered on the Tampa Bay 35 with just under seven minutes to go. The Texans failed to move the ball and settled for Ka’imi Fairbairn’s 53-yard field goal that cut the lead to 14-13 with just over five minutes left.
Texans defensive end Danielle Hunter forced a fumble and had two sacks to give him 101.5 in his 10-year career.
Tampa are 2-0 for the fifth season in succession, the longest active streak in the NFL.
Later in the night, the Los Angeles Chargers linebacker Daiyan Henley, battling fever and an illness, set the tone on the game’s first play from scrimmage by intercepting Raiders quarterback Geno Smith. Henley went on to have a big performance – as did the rest of the Los Angeles defense.
They shut down the Raiders, Justin Herbert passed for 242 yards and two touchdowns and the Chargers went on to a 20-9 victory to give coach Jim Harbaugh a win over rival Las Vegas coach Pete Carroll. The Chargers, however, lost defensive end Khalil Mack to a left elbow injury late in the first quarter. He went to the locker room, but returned with his arm in a sling. Harbaugh said Mack will need to undergo imaging tests.
Herbert also led the Chargers in rushing with 31 yards. His two TD passes went to Quentin Johnson and Keenan Allen, who returned to the Chargers on a one-year contract after playing last season in Chicago.
It was Los Angeles’ defense that suffocated the Raiders, holding them to 218 yards, beginning with Henley’s interception. “It definitely set the tone,” Henley said. “One thing we’ve been preaching with our defense is to start fast. We know it’s a long game and we have three more quarters to go. We just wanted to make sure we finished strong as well.”
Henley recorded 10 tackles that included two for loss and a sack. He also broke up two passes. “He’s a true competitor,” Herbert said. “We know how bad he’s feeling. For him to show up and give us his best effort like that, he’s a true leader on the team.”
For the Raiders (1-1), Smith threw three interceptions while completing 24 of 43 passes for 180 yards.
