Breaking: injured: his hand in the second quarter but stayed in the game before being pulled for……
The city of Philadelphia is rich with history, but its playoff history with Tampa Bay isn’t good, especially when its football team plays at Raymond James Stadium.
The Eagles and Buccaneers have met five times in the playoffs. Tampa holds a 3-2 edge with both losses coming in Philadelphia. The Bucs are undefeated against Philly in home playoff games, including one matchup the Eagles quarterback would like to forget.
At the end of the 2021 season, Jalen Hurts’ first as a starter, the Eagles traveled to face the defending Super Bowl champions in the NFC wild-card round. Tom Brady’s Buccaneers dominated Philadelphia 31-15 as Hurts did almost nothing until the fourth quarter.
Hurts went 23-of-43 with a pair of interceptions, two sacks and a fumble and finished with a dismal 60.0 quarterback rating. Some say he atoned for the loss with a 25-11 victory over Tampa in Week 3, but it was hardly the quarterback’s best game.
Even with 277 yards and a touchdown, he still threw a pair of interceptions, his first of five games with multiple interceptions in what’s been an up-and-down year for Hurts and the team. After starting the season 10-1, the Eagles lost five of their last six games to finish with an 11-6 record.
Tampa Bay did just the opposite. After going 3-1 to start the season, the Buccaneers lost six of their next seven games before rebounding to win five of their last six matchups while allowing only 14.6 points per game.
The Eagles finished 2022 with the league’s second-ranked defense, but they’ve been somewhat of a dumpster fire ever since. Only the Commanders (30.5) and Cardinals (26.8) gave up more points per game than the Eagles (25.2) and only Washington (4,457) gave up more yards through the air than Philadelphia (4,296) in the regular season.
Despite this, oddsmakers currently have the Eagles as 2.5-point favorites over the Buccaneers on Monday. That number could always change, especially if Hurts’ dislocated finger gets any worse.
Hurts injured his hand in the second quarter but stayed in the game before being pulled for Marcus Mariota just before halftime. Add in leg injuries to wide receiver A.J. Brown and safety Sydney Brown and things aren’t looking good for Philadelphia in the NFC playoffs.
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Philadelphia Eagles threw in the towel on their season way before embarrassing Giants loss
The Eagles are in big trouble heading into the playoffs.
Two months ago, many NFL pundits were convinced that the Philadelphia Eagles was the best team in the NFL. They may have made the playoffs but, since then, they’ve essentially fallen apart.
In the NFC East, that’s a role usually occupied by the Dallas Cowboys. However, after they lost to the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas put together a winning streak that included beating the Eagles en route to a division crown and No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs.
Meanwhile, after the 49ers thumped the Eagles, the Birds broke down, winning only one of their last six games and limping into the playoffs as the No. 5 seed.
What exactly went wrong? You can blame a lot of factors but let’s start with the defense. The Eagles finished the season 31st (out of 32 teams) in Passing Defense and 26th in Total Defense. Their offense helped make up for that issue for the first part of the season, but they could only stem the tide for so long.
Another disappointment has to be quarterback Jalen Hurts. Hurts was a strong candidate for Most Valuable Player last year and it seems he may have been exposed too. Although he has thrown for nearly 4,000 yards, his 23 touchdowns and 14 interceptions don’t make for an effective ratio. Certainly, the playcalling plays a role here as well.
Their young, brash head coach Nick Sirianni, whom Eagles fans have adored, is now being looked at as someone who is in over his head. Without his assistants from last season who left, he may just be an average coach and not the genius that some made him out to be last year.
By this past Sunday, despite having plenty to play for, the Eagles showed just how much they’d given up, losing to the lowly New York Giants. this is not the same team from last season that went all the way to the Super Bowl. The players may be the same, but something is very wrong with the mindset.
The Eagles aren’t a horrible team by any means, but this is a team that has Super Bowl expectations and now appears to be on life support heading into the playoffs. They find themselves on the road against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team they handily defeated back in September, though things look very different now.
If Philly loses that game, Sirianni may have to fall on his sword for their downfall. Perhaps that’s unfair given that the team was in the Super Bowl one season ago, but you won’t find too many NFL experts picking the Eagles to make it back there next season at this point.
