Mayfield, Bucs relish 2nd shot at Hurts and Eagles
TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Buccaneers insist they never doubted themselves. Not after Tom Brady retired. Not even after the Philadelphia Eagles gashed them in an earlyseason, prime-time matchup that suggested there was a huge gap between themselves and the defending NFC champions.
Jalen Hurts and the Eagles dominated the Bucs in Week 3, running 78 plays to Tampa Bay’s 44 and outgaining the seemingly overmatched, Brady-less Bucs 472 yards to 174 en route to a 25-11 victory.
Philadelphia rushed for 201 yards, while the Eagles kept Tampa Bay out of the end zone until early in the fourth quarter.
After the sputtering Bucs offense broke finally through, with Baker Mayfield throwing a short touchdown pass to Mike Evans and adding a 2-point conversion to trim a 22point deficit to 14, Hurts and the Eagles’ offense took the field and held the ball for the final nine minutes of the game.
A little over three months later, the NFC South champion Bucs (9-8) relish an opportunity to make amends when the Eagles (11-6) visit Raymond James Stadium on Monday night in the final game of the NFL’S wild-card weekend.
For much of the season, it’s a rematch that didn’t figure to happen.
Philadelphia started 10-1 before losing five of six to fall all the way to the No. 5 seed. Tampa Bay, meanwhile, rebounded from a
stretch in which it lost six of seven to go 5-1 over the last six weeks to win its third consecutive division title and earn the No. 4 seed.
“We have a locker room full of guys that are comfortable being counted out. That’s when we’re most comfortable,” Mayfield said. “All we wanted was a chance to get in. Now we’re here, and we’ve got to handle it the right way.”
Tampa Bay is only team in the NFC that’s made the playoffs each of the past four seasons. The culture built while Brady was with the team the past three years is one of the reasons coach Todd Bowles was confident the Bucs were capable of continued success with Mayfield at quarterback.
“We talked about it early
in the summer. We’ve got a very good culture. How we like what we have. It was a complete change from what we had before, which was great, too, but there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat,” Bowles said. “The guys believed in each other. They never fed into the outside media. We wrote our own narrative. We heard everything. They practiced hard, they worked hard, and they got it done.”
Philadelphia spent much of the season resembling a team that was determined to get back the Super Bowl after losing the title game to the Kansas City Chiefs last February.
When players gathered for practice this week, coach Nick Sirianni spoke to them about getting back to who they are as a team.
“I don’t think you come up with a new message because you got to the playoffs, you come back to who you are, what got you here,” Sirianni said. “Even if you drifted a little bit from who you are, what got you there, just trying to get yourself back to that moment.”