Falcons vs. Buccaneers 2016: Week 1 score predictions

Every week during the regular season, we ask Falcons fans to give us their best score predictions, for the purpose of ridiculing one another (and occasionally bragging about being right) throughout the rest of the season. It’s a time-honored tradition.

The difficulty of getting the score right in any given NFL game is well-established, but I feel like it’s even more difficult when we’re talking about the NFC South. The results of those games are almost always close (those fun Panthers blowouts against the Falcons are the sad, sad exception), and they rarely turn out exactly the way you expect.

The Buccaneers game is likely to be the same way. On paper, it’s a winnable game that could turn into a bit of a shootout given these two teams’ relative offensive strength and defensive question marks, but I have a feeling it’ll end up being more of a slog, like it was in 2015. Atlanta’s best shot is to get the ground game rolling, avoid mistakes (ha!), and force a couple of Jameis Winston turnovers. Nothing difficult about that.

I’ll go 28-24, Falcons. How about you?