TAMPA, Florida — – The Tampa Bay Buccaneers believe they never doubted themselves. Not after Tom Brady’s retirement. Not even after they were thoroughly outclassed by the Philadelphia Eagles in a prime-time, early-season game that gave the impression that the defending NFC champions were far apart from them.
In Week 3, Jalen Hurts and the Eagles crushed the Bucs, outgaining the Brady-less Bucs 472 yards to 174 and running 78 plays to Tampa Bay’s 44. The Eagles won 25-11.
Tampa Bay was not allowed to reach the end zone until the first few minutes of the fourth quarter, despite Philadelphia’s 201 yards of rushing.
After the struggling Bucs offense broke ultimately through, with Baker Mayfield tossing a short touchdown pass to Mike Evans and converting a 2-point conversion to narrow a 22-point deficit to 14, Hurts and the Eagles’ offense took the field and held the ball for the final nine minutes of the game.
Less than three months later, on Monday night, in the NFL’s wild-card weekend finale, the Bucs (9-8) of the NFC South will have the chance to avenge their defeat when the Eagles (11-6) come to Raymond James Stadium.
It was a rematch that nobody expected to happen for a large portion of the season.
Philadelphia had a 10-1 start and dropped to the No. 5 seed after dropping five of six games. In the meantime, Tampa Bay won its third straight division title and secured the No. 4 spot after bouncing back from a six-game losing streak to go 5-1 over the last six weeks.
“There are several people in our locker room who are at ease with being called out. We feel most at ease during that time,” Mayfield remarked. “All we wanted was an opportunity to enter. Now that we are here, we must act appropriately.”
The only NFC team to qualify for the playoffs in each of the previous four seasons is Tampa Bay. Coach Todd Bowles felt certain that the Bucs could succeed even with Mayfield at quarterback because of the culture that was established during Brady’s three years with the organization.
“We discussed it at the beginning of the summer. We have an excellent culture. How we appreciate what we own. There are many ways to skin a cat, but it was a radical departure from our previous situation, which was also fantastic,” Bowles remarked. “The men had faith in one another. They never provided content for other media. We penned the story ourselves. Everything was heard by us. They put in a lot of practice and labor.
