Buccaneers news: Tom Brady an underdog for first time since 2015

The Buccaneers opened as 3.5-point underdogs to Drew Brees and the Saints. It's the first time in five years Tom Brady isn't favored in the regular season.

With six Super Bowl wins and a host of other individual awards won throughout his illustrious career, the last thing that one would call Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Tom Brady is an underdog. Who would underestimate one of the game’s greatest players?

But that is the situation that Brady finds himself in ahead of the Buccaneers’ Week 1 matchup against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday.

According to Josh Alper in Pro Football Talk, Drew Brees and the Saints are currently favored by 3.5 points over Brady and the Buccaneers, and if they remain the favorites as the game draws closer, would mark the first time in a long time that Brady would be a regular season underdog.

According to an ESPN report, the last time Brady wasn’t a betting favorite came during a Week 2 game against the Buffalo Bills back in 2015—back when he still played for the New England Patriots. That would mean that the three-time NFL MVP has been favored in 74 straight starts. Pro Football Reference, meanwhile, indicates that his run as a regular season favorite was even longer, pointing to a Week 13 game between the Patriots and Green Bay Packers in 2014 as the last time Brady’s team was an underdog.

But being an underdog doesn’t mean that Las Vegas isn’t considering Brady and the Bucs as a Super Bowl favorite. The same ESPN report reveals that Tampa Bay is currently a 12-to-1 favorite to win the Super Bowl at Caesar Sportsbook by William Hill, while 22 percent of the total money wagered on winning it all at DraftKings has been on the Buccaneers, with the team attracting twice as much money as the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.