Cry Eagles Cry: A Disappointing End for the Birds

By: Matteo Ametrano

An early exit for the Eagles leaves a lot in question for the future of the franchise, as Baker Mayfield propels the Bucs to the Divisional Round

Eagles (5) @ Bucs (4): 32-9 Bucs  

We are going to have a new NFC champion this year, as another NFC East team goes down on Wild Card Weekend. The defending NFC champions Philadelphia Eagles season comes to an end in Tampa Bay at the hands of Baker Mayfield and Todd Bowles. What started off as such a promising season for the Eagles, has come to an early end. It is crazy to think that just over a month ago this same team was 10-1, coming off a huge week 12 win over the Bills, just after beating the Chiefs in Arrowhead. AJ Brown was having a monster start to the season, as he was going for 120 yards plus in 6 games consecutively. And even though the defence and play of Jalen Hurts seemed to regress from the past season, the Eagles were still finding ways to win ugly and remain in the hunt for the one seed in the NFC. However, this all came to a stop as the Eagles followed their win at home vs the Bills by getting blown out by the Niners, and then losing 6 of their last 7 games, including this wild card loss to Baker Mayfield.  It is unclear what all went wrong for the Eagles, but some difficult decisions could be ahead this off-season. 

The Buccaneers dominated the Eagles all night, on both sides of the ball. Tackling, which had been an obvious issue for the Eagles coming into this Wild Card matchup, after allowing 275 and 109 in the last two matchups of the regular season vs the Cardinals and Giants respectively, was put on full display in the first quarter as the Bucs got off to a quick 10-0 lead. A 44-yard TD strike from Baker Mayfield to David Moore exposed the tackling problems the Eagles have been having, as well as issues in the secondary early, and Baker continued to dominate them as he would go on to throw for 337 and add on three touchdowns. Tackling issues were so concerning for the Eagle's defensive players as the Bucs in the first quarter alone nearly went for 100 yards after the catch. This sort of play is simply unacceptable and will get any team eliminated from the playoffs as early as this.  

Offensive struggles continued throughout the entirety of the game for the Eagles as well as they had trouble establishing any sort of run game. The Bucs and Todd Bowles love to design pressures and get bodies to the quarterbacks. Similar to the pressures the Eagles saw in the final week of the regular season against a Wink Martindale defence that also loves to pressure the QB. Even with the Eagle's talent on the offensive line, Vita Vea and the Bucs' front were simply too much to handle as Jalen was regularly feeling the pressure. Due to this, the Eagles were only able to manage a total of 42 rushing yards on 15 attempts essentially forcing the Eagles to abandon the run. This is the lowest total an Eagles team has had since a 2018 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. With the run game having issues, the receiving core already down AJ Brown, and then losing Julio Jones early on, it was a tough road back for the Eagles and they were eventually defeated 32-9 in a rather one-sided affair.  

A lot of questions surround the Eagles personnel, including the status of HC Nick Siriani, will he be back for another season? What about All-World C Jason Kelce? However, for the Bucs and Baker Mayfield, it is a playoff victory, another bonus for Baker (he is really racking up the incentives), and they look forward to preparing to head to Detroit to take on the high-flying offence of Motor City Dan Campbell and Jared Goff.