On behalf of an overlooked team: Do you have faith in these Bucs yet?

TAMPA — We have seen better teams. Much, much better teams.

You want to talk about great defenses? The Brooks/Sapp/Lynch/Barber group was a roster for the ages. You want to talk about great offenses? For two years, Tom Brady turned the Buccaneers into must-see television for a nation.

And, yes, both brought a Lombardi Trophy home to Tampa Bay.

But this Bucs team? This ragtag bunch is something else.

It is gloriously flawed.

Spectacularly thin.

Amazingly limited.

And unbelievably alive.

The Bucs beat the Eagles 32-9 Monday night in an NFC wild-card game to punctuate one of the most unlikely seasons in franchise history. Tampa Bay will now travel to Detroit for a division round showdown with the Lions on Sunday.

“This team has a whole lot of talent. This team has a whole lot of tenacity,” said left guard Aaron Stinnie. “This team is like a bunch of fighters right now, and everybody is backing in a circle and watching each other’s back.”

You want the 77-word version of who this team is?

The Bucs have played 18 games this season and have been the underdog 12 times. They were supposed to lose two-thirds of their games by now, and yet they are one of eight teams still standing in mid-January. They started with an upset in Minnesota, added an upset in New Orleans, had three consecutive upsets in Atlanta, in Green Bay and against Jacksonville in December, and have now knocked off an 11-win Eagles team in the playoffs.

“I think this is because of the (doubters), honestly,” left tackle Tristan Wirfs said. “It’s fine if people didn’t have faith in us, we’re just a bunch of guys trying to play great football. I love everybody in this locker room, it’s so fun coming to work every day. We’re just fighting, we’re just trying to keep playing football.”

This does not often happen. Teams with a salary cap IOU of nearly $80 million are supposed to suck it up and wait for next season’s draft. Teams who sign a thrice-discarded quarterback are supposed to be programming fodder for the rest of the league. Teams with 13 rookies on the roster — including four in the starting lineup against Philadelphia — are supposed to be poolside in Cancun by now.

So how were the Bucs rescued from the abyss, after losing six of seven in October and November?

“We are all we’ve got,” said linebacker Lavonte David. “When we go out there, we play as a team, we win as a team, we lose as a team. We try not to focus on what’s going on in the outside world, we know what we’ve got in this locker room. We prepare ourselves to play the way we need to play, and we take care of business.”

In the biggest game of the season, this group took care of business like never before. The defense blitzed Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts relentlessly. The offense was aggressive from the first snap. The Bucs played like a confident team, and they led for 55 of the game’s 60 minutes.

The Eagles may be in the midst of a historic collapse, but that does not mean this was a fluke. There were no bad bounces, no odd turnovers. The Bucs smacked the Eagles around in a complete reversal of their Week 3 meeting when Philadelphia won 25-11 on “Monday Night Football.”

Baker Mayfield threw for 337 yards and three touchdowns in a performance that has got to have fans in Cleveland crying in their parkas. Cornerback Jamel Dean had 10 tackles and one pass defensed after the least impressive regular season of his five-year career.

David, in his 12th season, had two tackles for a loss, tight end Cade Otton had career highs in receptions (8) and yards (89), rookie Trey Palmer had a 56-yard touchdown and veteran David Moore had a 44-yard touchdown reception after being released by the Bucs earlier in the season.

These are not names you will likely hear when the Pro Bowl is played in a few weeks, but they are perfect representations of the evolution of this Bucs roster.

A few holdovers from the Super Bowl team of 2020, an impressively effective 2023 draft class and a handful of vagabonds who have found a home in Tampa Bay.

“We went through some ups and downs this season. To stick with it, and everybody still bought in and be where we’re at right now is a really great feeling,” Wirfs said. “I told guys, ‘It’s a long road. We’ve got three more games, and then we can celebrate for real. But be excited about this.’ It’s definitely, definitely fun.”

The odds say this team is not likely to go any further. A short week followed by a road game against the Lions is not the recipe for success.

Right now, there’s really only one ingredient to offer hope:

The Bucs will be underdogs again.

John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.

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