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The National Football League has officially added a 17th game to the regular season, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 2021 schedule now includes a road game against the Indianapolis Colts.
The new collective agreement ratified by the NFL and NFLPA last March included an option for the NFL to extend the regular season from 16 to 17 games. The NFL will exercise this option from 2021 and will also reduce the preseason from four games to three. The resulting 20-game schedule will still include a single week off.
Game 17 will be a fifth interconference match for each team. In addition to playing all four games against one of the divisions from the other conference, each team will also play only one game against a team from another division that matched its place in the standings. These divisional interconference meetings will operate on a four-year rotating basis.
The 2021 season will see NFC South with AFC South for that extra game, and the Buccaneers and Colts finished second in those respective divisions in 2020. Both teams made the playoffs and Tampa Bay ultimately went the distance with a victory over Kansas City in Super Bowl LV.
To preserve the round-trip balance in a season with an odd number of games, the two conferences will alternate with all home games for the 17th competition. The AFC will play all home games in 2021, giving those teams nine regular season home games. In 2022, all extra games will be home dates for NFC teams, meaning the Buccaneers will have nine regular season home games that year. The 32 teams will have 10 home dates each season, either nine in the regular season and one preseason or eight in the regular season and two in the preseason.
While the Buccaneers know their opponents for all 17 regular season games in 2021, dates and times have yet to be announced. In addition to the Colts, the Buccaneers will also have interconference games against all four AFC East teams.
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