by Carter Brantley
While it was a valiant effort for the Buccaneers against the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles, Tampa Bay was unable to overcome a litany of injuries, a blocked punt return for a touchdown, and many other mistakes, as they lost the Eagles 31 to 25 Sunday afternoon.
The team went into halftime down by significant margin with the Eagles, jumping out to an early 14 to 3 advantage in the first quarter and building upon the lead to make it 24 to 6 by halftime.
The game got off to an ugly start with a blocked punt being returned for a touchdown for Philadelphia.
Things spiraled from there in the first half for the Buccaneers, as they gave up a passing touchdown to Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert after a 73-yard drive.
The Buccaneers responded with a field goal, but quickly gave up another touchdown from that Hurts-Goedert connection.
Chase McLaughlin managed to set a new longest kick record for Tampa Bay, nailing a 65-yarder as the 1st half came to a close.
The Bucs surged back in the 2nd half, only surrendering 21 yards of offense from Philly and managing to put up a couple of big-time touchdowns from Bucky Irving and Emeka Egbuka.
With another seemingly wonderful comeback loading, the Bucs managed to get it to within an 8 point margin, and were driving to just outside the Eagles 10 yard line.
Then Baker fell back into his bad habits, scrambling around and throwing an ill-advised pass into a hoard of Philly defenders, with rookie linebacker Jihaad Campbell hauling in his first career interception.
The defense stepped up and continued their stifling 2nd-half play, forcing a 3-and-out, but the offense failed to capitalize and the game ended with the Eagles punter sprinting into the end zone to let the clock run out.
There were some excellent performances from the Bucs, despite the loss; Egbuka’s touchdown catch was his 4th of the season.
Bucky Irving had 165 yards from scrimmage in addition to that receiving touchdown in the 2nd half, although people might focus on his fumble in the 3rd quarter that led to Philly’s only 2nd half score.
These games happen, and even if the Bucs had played perfectly they still might have lost this Philadelphia is quite a good team.
This might not be the last of these two teams see each other as this game could’ve very well been an NFC Championship Game preview.
How Tampa Bay responds to this loss will be a huge indicator as to whether or not they can secure an NFC South division crown.
Luckily, the Carolina Panthers and New Orleans Saints both took losses Sunday afternoon, but the Atlanta Falcons managed to squeak out a one possession victory over the Washington Commanders.
It’s obviously too early to be looking at those types of things but it’s always nice to see that the bottom of the NFC South will hopefully be just as bad as it was last year.
