Brady throws 2 TDS, Bucs handle Eagles
TAMPA, Fla. – Tom Brady threw for 271 yards and two touchdowns Sunday, helping the Tampa Bay Buccaneers launch their bid for a return to the Super Bowl with a dominating 31-15 NFC wildcard playoff victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.
The defending champions set the tempo from the start, with Brady leading a pair of long TD drives in the opening quarter and building the lead to 17-0 by halftime.
The seven-time Super Bowl winner finished off the Eagles with TD passes of 2 yards to Rob Gronkowski and 36 yards to Mike Evans, improving his dazzling playoff record to 35-11 in a record 46 postseason starts.
The Bucs defense did its part, too, intercepting Jalen Hurts twice in the Philadelphia quarterback’s playoff debut.
Brady completed 29 of 37 passes without an interception while extending his postseason record for TD passes to 85.
But the Bucs (14-4) had matters well in hand before the reigning Super Bowl MVP found Gronkowski wide open in the middle of the end zone to make it 24-0 midway through the third quarter. The 6-foot-5 Evans punctuated his TD catch for a 31-0 lead with a front flip over the goal line.
The Eagles (9-9) scored on Boston Scott’s 34-yard run and Hurts’ 16-yard TD pass to Kenneth Gainwell in the fourth quarter. A 2-point conversion trimmed Philadelphia’s deficit to 16 with 4:45 remaining, but that was as close as it would get.
Giovani Bernard scored on a 2-yard run and Ke’shawn Vaughn, a secondyear pro filling in for injured running backs Leonard Fournette and Ronald Jones, covered the final yard of a 70yard drive that put the Bucs up 14-0.
Brady led the NFL in passing yards, touchdowns, attempts and completions this season, but Tampa Bay gained the upper hand in this one by running the ball and keeping it away from Hurts and the league’s leading rushing attack.
The Bucs ran 25 plays to Philadelphia’s eight in the first quarter, outgaining the Eagles 137 yards to 17 and compiling an 11-1 edge in first downs.
It didn’t get much better after that, with a Tampa Bay defense fortified by the return of injured linebackers Lavonte David, Shaquil Barrett and Jason Pierre-paul turning away Hurts’ most promising drive of the opening half with Mike Edwards’ end zone interception.
The Eagles won four of their last five games to earn the No. 7 playoff seeding in the NFC, however the turning point in their season came when running the ball became a focal point of the offense during the second half of a 28-22 home loss to the Bucs.
The Eagles ran for at least 130 yards
in their next nine games, including seven in a row with more than 175. Hurt led the team with 784 yards and 10 yards rushing, becoming the eighth quarterback in NFL history to throw for more than 3,000 yards and run for over 750.
Hurts finished his playoff debut 23 of 43 passing for 258 yards. He ran for a team-high 39 yards on eight attempts, with the Eagles finishing with 95 yards rushing overall – well below their season average of 159.7 per game.
Late Saturday
Bills 47, Patriots 17: The lingering sting of being embarrassed on home turf by the New England Patriots didn’t sit well with defensive end Jerry Hughes and the Buffalo Bills.
On Saturday night, the Bills did something about it by erasing any doubt of who now rules the AFC East.
Josh Allen set a team playoff record with five touchdown passes, including two to Dawson Knox, and Devin Singletary ran for two scores in the first half of a throttling of the division-rival Patriots in a wild-card playoff game.
Meanwhile, Hughes was part of a defense that ended Mac Jones’ rookie season by intercepting him twice, sacking him three times and limiting him to throwing two mean-nothing touchdown passes in the second half with the game well out of reach.
The margin of defeat was the largest in the playoffs for New England in coach Bill Belichick’s tenure, which began in 2000.
And while the winds were relatively calm Saturday, the Bills were hot in frigid conditions, with a game-time temperature of 7 degrees.
Allen finished 21 of 25 for 308 yards in a game Buffalo became the NFL’S first team in the Super Bowl era to score on each of its seven possessions that didn’t end with a kneeldown.