Last week, we asked whether the Bucs were OK. Last Sunday, Minnesota answered.
Tampa Bay fell 23-16 to the Vikings, dropping to 0-3. The Bucs are the NFC’s only winless team. And despite playing in a division where nobody has a winning record, Tampa is stuck at the bottom of it.
As if their woeful record wasn’t enough, Baker Mayfield, less than a month removed from signing a $165 million extension, dislocated his throwing thumb and will miss time. The job now belongs to Jalon Daniels, an undrafted rookie who went 0-for-3 with an interception in his first NFL snaps.
The good news is that the Bucs now own a new NFL record. The bad news is the record itself. The Bucs haven’t covered a point spread in 12 straight games, the longest such streak since the Super Bowl era began, according to Action Network. That breaks the mark of 11 set by the 1983-84 Houston Oilers.
Tampa Bay’s last cover was a 23-3 win in New Orleans on Oct. 26 of last year. Oddsmakers made them the favorite in eight of the 12 games since, and they lost every one of those games outright, including three where they were giving at least a touchdown.
A point spread is designed to make every game a coin flip, and Tampa Bay has found a way to lose 12 coin flips in a row.
At least the Rays are giving the Bay something to cheer about this weekend.
Now, it’s on to our weekly game of winners and losers.
Winners
Honorable mention: Oyster harvesters. Last year’s revival was just the beginning.
Apalachicola Bay’s Fall wild oyster season opened Thursday and runs through the end of February. It’s the bay’s second season since the practice was shut down completely in 2020 following the fishery’s 2013 collapse.
Harvesters can work three reefs: NFWF Cat Point, Cat Point Spur and Peanut Ridge. The total cap will be 2,560 bags, with most of those set aside for commercial crews.
The first season back, a two-month window this past Winter, yielded more than 4,200 bags. State wildlife officials obviously considered it enough of a success to schedule this longer run.
Of course, this isn’t yet a return to the old days. The Easthole reef is closed. The commercial limit per harvester dropped from 31 bags to 19, which Apalachicola oysterman Roger Mathis called a letdown.
FWC sets those caps based on what the reefs can bear. Researchers estimate the bay’s oyster habitat is still down by about 95%. The state is aiming to reverse that trend by restoring 2,000 acres of reef by 2032.
The bay got another assist this week, when Florida agencies came out against a federal plan to resume dredging the Apalachicola River for barge traffic, arguing the work could damage the bay.
So yes, things aren’t quite back to normal just yet. But smaller hauls and tighter rules beat what nearby oyster families had for five years: nothing at all.
Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Florida Democrats. For years, Florida’s monthly registration reports have been moving the wrong way for Democrats. September finally offered the party some good news.
The party gained 29,633 active registered voters last month, edging out Republicans’ 29,140, according to Decision Desk HQ analyst Michael Pruser. It’s the first month that the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) has posted a bigger gain than the Florida GOP since Pruser began tracking Florida’s numbers in mid-2021.
It’s also a sharp turn from August, when Republicans added more than twice as many voters as Democrats.
FDP Chair Nikki Fried credited higher grocery, gas, housing and insurance costs, along with organizers working the state year-round, for contributing to the change as Republicans deal with a referendum election.
Make no mistake, Republicans still hold a significant active-voter edge of more than 1.5 million, a number that has grown since the GOP first overtook Democrats in November 2021. Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power waved off September’s 493-voter difference as a “rounding error,” and on its own, he’s right.
But the timing matters. The number landed days before Monday’s Oct. 5 registration deadline, in the same week national forecasters kept shifting statewide races toward Democrats. One month doesn’t erase the giant hole Florida Democrats have dug themselves into, but if they’re ever going to climb out of it, they have to start somewhere.
The biggest winner: Miami. Citadel founder Ken Griffin pledged $2 billion toward building a Miami campus for Carnegie Mellon University on more than 35 acres in Wynwood. Carnegie Mellon also bought space in Wynwood from developer Moishe Mana for about $1.1 billion.
For Griffin, who moved Citadel’s headquarters to Miami in 2022, this marks a permanent, generational commitment to investing in the region and growing its status as a tech and innovation hub.
That money comes from an overall $3 billion donation that Griffin gave to Carnegie Mellon University on Wednesday, the largest-ever university donation on record. The remaining $1 billion goes to the Pittsburgh campus, where the top-ranked computer science school will carry Griffin’s name.
As for Miami, the plan calls for breaking ground in 2027 and enrolling the first class in 2028. Once it’s fully up and running, the campus is designed to hold more than 3,500 undergraduate and graduate students, roughly 300 faculty and over 600 staff, plus room for corporate research labs and startup studios.
Rather than traditional majors, the curriculum will be built around big societal problems such as advanced manufacturing.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the choice to fund this campus in Miami was a vote of confidence in the region’s people and economy. The donation will reshape the urban landscape, driving high-paying jobs, local startup ecosystems and top-tier talent pipelines directly to South Florida.
Board of Governors Chair Alan Levine acknowledged that Carnegie Mellon in Miami and Vanderbilt’s planned West Palm Beach campus will be part of reshaping the state’s higher-ed map.
And Griffin is making his mark in reshaping one of the premier cities in the world.
Losers
Dishonorable mention: Jacksonville Transportation Authority. After JTA’s decision to cut buses and fire drivers amid massive financial struggles, the state’s top prosecutor is now demanding the agency’s records.
Attorney General James Uthmeier’s Office of Statewide Prosecution subpoenaed JTA this week, including seeking documents tied to former CEO Nat Ford, who left in July after 13 years, Ford’s wife and an organizational development firm.
JTA says it will cooperate fully, and nobody has been charged with anything. But the probe lands amid a period where the agency has been in freefall.
JTA disclosed a $39 million deficit last month, triggering layoffs hitting about one-fifth of its workforce. Those cuts include frontline bus operators and maintenance workers, along with administrative positions.
With that comes degraded services. The Skyway shuts down Nov. 2, the autonomous NAVI shuttles stop Dec. 31, and some First Coast Flyer routes are dropping from every 30 minutes to once an hour.
City Council President Nick Howland noted that just two months ago, city and JTA officials projected a shortfall of only about $2 million. Council auditors blamed overspending, falling sales and gas tax revenue, and losses from a fare-reduction pilot. JTA is now leaning on a $30 million loan of local gas tax money to pay down a $25 million line of credit, and Howland has formed a select oversight committee to dig through the wreckage.
Council Member Rory Diamond said riders and the laid-off workers deserve “answers and accountability.” And it appears Uthmeier’s probe is out to get them.
Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Hope Florida. You’d think this story would have died a while ago, certainly once a grand jury came up empty in terms of any charges. But this is the scandal that keeps on giving.
Invoices obtained by the Florida Trident show Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Office paid Continental PLLC more than $111,000 — that’s our taxpayer money, by the way — to represent an unidentified client as the grand jury probe unfolded. The firm charged $875 an hour for lawyers including Chris Kise, who represented Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, and Lazaro Fields.
Add the nearly $200,000 paid to Boies Schiller Flexner for former deputy Chief of Staff Katie Strickland, whom jurors deemed not credible, and the public’s bill for the two firms reaches above $300,000.
The billing records track with the fight over the report’s secrecy. A December 2025 entry describes an hour of contact with the Leon County State Attorney’s Office while the grand jury was still meeting.
After the report was filed under seal Jan. 28, and with a 15-day window to argue to keep it sealed, Kise billed more than 70 hours in 12 days and finalized a motion on Feb. 12, the last day in that 15-day timeline.
A later entry refers to the State Attorney’s answer to “Motions to Repress,” plural, suggesting more than one person tried to keep it buried.
An Attorney General’s opinion, still on Uthmeier’s website, says public funds can’t cover an official’s lawyers in a criminal investigation. Governor’s General Counsel Ryan Newman arranged the hiring and is now Uthmeier’s Deputy Chief of Staff.
Last month, DeSantis named Fields and Hope Florida Foundation lawyer Jeff Aaron to the nominating commission for the 1st District Court of Appeal, the court that would hear any appeal over the report’s release. What a coincidence!
Meanwhile, House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell and Rep. Kelly Skidmore are asking the IRS to examine whether the groups that moved the Centene settlement money reported it properly and owe taxes. And depending on those answers, this story might not be dead yet.
The biggest loser: David Rivera. South Florida is arguably the region in America most opposed to Latin American dictators. On Friday, a federal Judge sentenced former U.S. Rep. David Rivera to a decade in prison for secretly working on behalf of one.
U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian sentenced the 61-year-old Republican to 10 years for hiding a $50 million lobbying deal with a U.S. arm of Venezuela’s state oil company. Jurors convicted him in May on every count, including conspiracy to commit money laundering and failing to register as an agent of Nicolás Maduro’s government.
Prosecutors said Delcy Rodríguez, then Venezuela’s foreign minister and now its acting President, picked Rivera to work his Republican contacts and soften the first Trump administration’s stance on sanctions. During the seven-week trial, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Rivera’s longtime friend, testified he knew nothing of the arrangement and felt betrayed.
Friends and former colleagues had flooded the court with letters asking for mercy ahead of Friday’s hearing. Defense attorney Ed Shohat argued his client did nothing to help Maduro and shouldn’t die in prison over a missed foreign lobbying registration form (as if this were just a clerical error).
Rivera’s lawyers plan an appeal and have applied for a presidential pardon. He still faces a separate foreign lobbying case in Washington.
But Rivera, dubbed a “disgraced” ex-Congressman for years, has now reinforced that moniker and will have 10 years in prison to think about it.
