Of the four NFC South teams, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only squad that entered the 2012 season with little or no expectations of success.

The Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints were both the bullies of the division, expected to be habitually strong. The Carolina Panthers were looked at as a team on the rise, on the cusp of doing enough for a postseason berth.

Tampa Bay cleaned house in the offseason. The Buccaneers sent head coach Raheem Morris packing and started fresh with Greg Schiano and his new staff.

There weren’t any expectations of success for the 2012 Buccaneers, no delusions of grandeur. But the Buccaneers started the season with a divisional win and an inch of hope crept in.

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Per league rules, NFL teams that make the playoffs and have a first-round bye utilize this off week to allow assistant coaches and coordinators interview for coaching jobs elsewhere.

It didn’t take long for teams around the league to start inquiring about the Atlanta Falcons coaching staff that put together a league-best 13-3 record.

Falcons offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter has been contacted by multiple teams with head coaching vacancies and will interview this week with the Philadelphia Eagles, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cleveland Browns, according to Alex Marvez of Fox Sports.

Any time a coordinator has a shot at becoming a head coach, it’s prudent that the opportunity be investigated. Once Koetter does his due diligence and speaks with the Eagles, Chiefs and Browns, though, his best bet may be to turn them down and continue with the Falcons.

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When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers upset the Atlanta Falcons Sunday, 22-17, they did more than just stop a five-game losing streak.

The Buccaneers had lost their last eight December games, dating back to the 2010 season. Winning in the Georgia Dome ensured a much better offseason for Tampa Bay by giving the franchise a positive to focus on until the team begins offseason workouts in 2013.

In 2011, the Raheem Morris-led Buccaneers lost their last 10 games, and the franchise parted ways with its head coach. New head coach Greg Schiano wasn’t under that kind of pressure to win Sunday, but with a roster made up of very young athletes, spending the next four months not thinking about losing their last six games is a very fortunate circumstance.

Another positive to build from in 2013 is the strength of the top rookies from the 2012 draft class.

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The dreadful, painful, miserable and hopefully forgettable 2012 football season for the New Orleans Saints has mercifully come to an end.

The Carolina Panthers scored four unanswered touchdowns over a 15:25 span in the third and fourth quarter to beat the Saints, 44-38. The loss was New Orleans’ ninth of the season (second to the Panthers), marking the worst Saints' season since 2007.

The Saints 2012 season started off the field, with suspensions handed down because of the BountyGate fiasco. It got rolling on the field with four consecutive losses and was highlighted by terrible defense all season.

Four teams—including the Panthers, who pasted 530 yards Sunday against New Orleans—tallied 500 or more yards on the Saints defense this year, and offenses ran and threw for at least 400 yards in all but four games.

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The Carolina Panthers have made no statement that confirms nor denies my sentiment here, but with their 44-38 win in New Orleans over the Saints, head coach Ron Rivera saved his job and will be back at the helm in Charlotte in 2013.

The Panthers started the 2012 season losing six of their first seven games. The coaching staff was criticized for not managing the talent pool on the roster correctly, and general manager Marty Hurney was relieved of his duties.

A Week 9 win over the Washington Redskins stopped the bleeding, temporarily, but then Carolina went on the lose three of its next four games.

Players were bickering on the sideline. They were also calling out the coaching staff. No one on the planet—me included—thought Rivera could do anything to save his job, and quite frankly, I felt he was lucky that team owner Jerry Richardson let him stay on until the end of the season.

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With the NFC’s No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs locked up prior to Week 17, Atlanta Falcons head coach Mike Smith decided not to rest his starters in Sunday’s meaningless game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“We’re going to play the game to win,” Smith said during his Monday press conference. “That’s how we’re going to approach it. It’s an important game because it’s a division game. All games, I think, are important. In terms of the importance of it, does it have no bearing? It really does, because we want to win every time we go out and play.”

The Falcons did not win Sunday. Tampa Bay beat Atlanta 22-17, and the Falcons were outplayed for the majority of the game.

So much for momentum.

One of the only contributing factors for playing the starters in Week 17’s game against the Buccaneers was to build positive momentum for the playoffs and make sure no one got rusty with an almost three-week break (had the starters not played, it would have been 20 days from Atlanta’s Week 16 win to its first playoff game).

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Head coach Sean Payton sat out the entire 2012 season, suspended by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for his part in the New Orleans Saints’ pay-for-injury bounty program that spanned three seasons from 2009 to 2011.

Payton won’t miss one second of preparation time for the 2013 season. Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer reported Friday that the Saints and Payton had agreed in principle to a new deal:

Adam Schefter of ESPN reported shortly thereafter that Payton’s new deal was a five-year contract. The financial terms were undisclosed.

When Payton was suspended, he was still under contract with the Saints. However, he had a clause in that contract that allowed him to leave if general manager Mickey Loomis was suspended or left the franchise. The NFL voided that contract because Loomis was one of the members of the staff, along with Payton, punished and suspended by the league.

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When the 2013 NFC Pro Bowl was announced, only one player from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was on the list; defensive tackle Gerald McCoy.

There were three other players on Tampa Bay’s roster that were close to being Pro Bowl worthy but didn’t quite make the grade. Wide receiver Vincent Jackson, rookie running back Doug Martin and free safety Ronde Barber all had shots at the honor, but none were selected.

And that was the right call.

Jackson was on the outside looking in at a number of talented wide receivers. Calvin Johnson and Brandon Marshall were selected as the starters, and Julio Jones and Victor Cruz are the backups. Johnson and Marshall were no-brainers, and Jones was definitely solid too.

The Cruz selection was a mystery, unless the 2011 was factored in. Which it was not.

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