Buccaneers must now focus on staying in first place after beating Raiders

After surviving a 28-13 win over the Raiders on Sunday, the Buccaneers are alone atop the NFC South. The stark reality, though, is that keeping first place will be tougher than getting there.

“Just because we’re in first is one thing,” said head coach Todd Bowles. “To stay in first is a whole ‘nother deal. We’ve got four weeks to play. We’re happy to be playing meaningful football in December. We understand what that means and we’ve got to go out every week and try to squeeze out these games.”

Thanks to costly turnovers, Tampa Bay (7-6) almost squeezed out a loss on Sunday. In the first quarter, Baker Mayfield was 9 of 11 with touchdown passes to Jalen McMillan and Rachaad White. Then, against a Raiders team that entered last in the NFL with only five takeaways on the season, Mayfield gave the ball back three times in the second quarter alone – a fumble and two interceptions. Suddenly, the Bucs’ 14-0 lead was 14-10 at halftime.

“Turnovers didn’t help,” Bowles added. “We shot ourselves in the foot with a couple penalties and they stoned us at the line of scrimmage a couple times as well. We didn’t play well overall. It’s hard to win a game when you turn it over three times, but those guys stuck with it and made some plays in the second half and we got it done. It’s not always going to be pretty, but as long as you can win ’em, it doesn’t matter how you get ’em.”

Getting ‘em is only expected to get tougher the rest of the way. The Bucs certainly won’t enjoy the large margin for error they had against the Raiders (2-10). Mayfield has come out of the bye and led Tampa Bay on a three-game winning streak but he has four interceptions and four touchdown passes in the last two, victories over two teams expected to hold high selections in the first round of the draft, Carolina and Las Vegas.

And this week’s game is a challenge. Tampa Bay faces a cross-country road trip to Los Angeles, where the Bucs meet the Chargers (8-5) and the league’s No. 1 scoring defense on Sunday (4:25 p.m. ET, FOX). Los Angeles has allowed just 15.9 points per game

The Bucs also might not be able to rely on their own defense, as they did in the win over the Raiders. On Sunday, Tampa Bay sustained a major blow to a secondary decimated by injury. Bowles said that All-Pro safety Antoine Winfield sprained his knee and could be out until the playoffs.

After the Chargers, Tampa Bay travels to Dallas in Week 16 before closing the regular season with home games against the Panthers and Saints. They’ll get a bonus home game in the NFC playoffs if they can clinch their division. However, even there they have no margin for error thanks to a pair of losses to second-place Atlanta. The Falcons own the tiebreaker if the two clubs were to finish in a deadlock.

For more information on the Buccaneers and Raiders, visit the Tampa Bay and Las Vegas team pages at ProFootballPost.com.