Disappointing: Eagles vs. Bucs Playoff Takeaways
TAMPA – Rumors went back and forth when it came to Nick Sirianni and his future with the Philadelphia Eagles all week before finally settling on the common-sense sentiment that a coach with a .667 winning percentage and three consecutive playoff appearances couldn’t be set adrift.
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Then the Eagles took the field in Tampa and embarrassed themselves to the tune of a 32-9 playoff loss to the Buccaneers, a fitting end to a historic collapse from 10-1 to 11-7 all of which can be directly traced to the head coach.
The stretch of six losses in seven games was headlined by Sirianni’s strange in-season shift of defensive play-callers from Sean Desai to Matt Patricia, along with his offense’s ability to come up with viable counterpunches for the defensive adjustments hurled at them.
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The fact that Baker Mayfield came in banged up and threw for 337 yards despite the most dropped passes in a postseason game in 17 years, explains just how inept Philadelphia was. If anything, 32-9 was a kind period to this season for the Eagles.
It should have been worse.
“Just embarrassing,” a team source said.
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And now it will be Sirianni’s task to explain what went wrong to an owner in Jeffrey Lurie who doesn’t shy away from searching for scapegoats when expectations aren’t met.
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BLITZ BEATERS
The idea of a blitz beater is something an offense does to combat an extra rusher by the defense. It’s taken on a different meaning in Philadelphia where the offensive staff’s ideas of combating the blitz seem to be either vertical routes or wide screens that go nowhere. Whether it’s Sirianni’s offense, Brian Johnson’s play-calling, Jalen Hurts’ inability to decipher what he’s looking at, or a combination of all three, the issue helped sink the season.
OOPS
The Bucs were credited with six drops in the first half (and that was being kind because I saw seven). That was the most in an entire playoff since 2006 never mind the first 30 minutes. That was the only reason the Eagles were in the game in the second half.
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WHIFFING
The Eagles’ version of Tampa Bay’s hiccups catching the football was missed tackles, a frustrating trend that developed late in the season. Sirianni has continuously stressed that the metrics placed the Philadelphia defense at the top of the league when it came to tackling for much of the season, which made the collapse in technique and fundamentals all the more confounding.
It seemed like both James Bradberry and Hasson Reddick were benched for small portions of the game for their tackling efforts.
The missed tackles were so egregious one Eagles’ personnel man was overheard dropping an F-bomb and rhetorically asking himself “what is going on.”
“Tackling is a tricky thing,” Sirianni said. “… Obviously throughout the body of work of the season it was good but it wasn’t as good in the last couple of weeks.
“…So we’ll look at all that.”
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K.I.S.S.
Philadelphia had to do some different things on defense due to injuries to Reed Blankenship (groin) and Sydney Brown (torn ACL) at safety but Matt Patricia continued to utilize too many moving parts, almost creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of mistakes based on what should be simple communication issues. At one point late in the first half, Kevin Byard had to use a timeout because there were only 10 defenders in the field.
The Patricia era, which will almost certainly end will be defined by failing to “keep it simple, stupid.”
SITUATIONAL MASTER-LESS
Sirianni preaches that his team needs to be situational masters and the failure in Tampa against that standard was epic, as in 0-for-11 (the Eagles finished 0-for-9 on third down and 0-for-2 on fourth down).
“Not getting them in third and short, number one,” Tampa Bay coach Todd Bowles said of his team’s success. “Had a package where we created just to get some pressure on them to kind of confuse them up front a little bit.”
BRIGHT SPOT
About the only bright spot for Philadelphia was the play of receiver DeVonta Smith. Without A.J. Brown, who missed the game with a sprained MCL, Smith had to step up as the WR1 and he did to the tune of eight receptions for 148 yards.
It’s very frustrating,” Smith said of the loss. “Especially when you know you have the talent, you have the right mindset, you have the right things going. And like I said, it’s just the small details you’re missing.”
