Eagles vs. Buccaneers: 3 winners, 10 losers, 4 IDKs

The Philadelphia Eagles are 2-2 after getting their butts kicked by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Time to hand out some winners, losers, and IDKs.

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WINNERS

SAQUON BARKLEY

Pretty much the only thing the Eagles had going for them offensively.

Barkley’s 10 carries went for 84 yards and his two catches resulted in 32 yards for a total of 116 yards from scrimmage. Pro Football Focus credited Barkley with four missed tackles forced.

With Barkley breaking off a 59-yard run to start the second half, it looked like he might spark an Eagles comeback for the second week in a row. Alas, the rest of the team did not do their part.

Barkley is clearly the Eagles’ MVP so far this season.

BRANDON GRAHAM

Death, taxes, and BG bringing it.

He’s only the second Eagles player to ever log a sack at the age of 36 or older (Richard Kent was the first in 1997).

Graham also had one TFL in addition to his sack.

PFF’s grading system has always loved Graham, so, this isn’t a surprise … but BG is the Eagles’ highest-graded defender this season.

THE TIMING OF THE BYE WEEK

After that kind of performance, I’m not exactly feeling like I’m in a rush to watch the Eagles play again. I think a weekend off could be nice. Plus, the bye week just so happens to time up with the Phillies beginning their NLDS playoff battle against the winner of the New York Mets–Milwaukee Brewers series. I’ll be at Citizens Bank Park for those games on Saturday and Sunday, so, say hi if you see me there.

Oh, yeah, the Eagles stand to benefit from the bye, too. A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Lane Johnson could all be back when the Birds play again in Week 6. Sydney Brown could come off the PUP list. The coaching staff will have some time to reflect and potentially make some changes, such as replacing Avonte Maddox with Cooper DeJean at nickel cornerback.

This loss to the Bucs was undoubtedly bad. The way the Eagles lost raises serious questions about the team’s ceiling. But the bye gives them a chance to regroup and try to figure some things out.

The next four games after the bye:

Week 6 — vs. Cleveland Browns

Week 7 — at New York Giants

Week 8 — at Cincinnati Bengals

Week 9 — vs. Jacksonville Jaguars

The Eagles will probably be favored in at least three of those games. There’s a realistic path being 5-3 before a key road game against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 10.

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LOSERS

NICK SIRIANNI

Where is the evidence of a well-coached team?

• The Eagles consistently don’t look ready to play. They’re the only NFL team that hasn’t scored in the first quarter this season. Dating back to last season, they’ve gone six straight games without first quarter points. The Bucs scored 24 points (would’ve been 28 if not for a dropped touchdown) and moved the ball 271 yards while the Eagles had run just nine plays that resulted in NEGATIVE FIVE yards. The extent of Sirianni’s say in “Kellen Moore’s offense” isn’t perfectly clear … but one would think he plays a part in approving the opening game script. And those approaches have clearly stunk.

• The Eagles often lose the turnover battle. They’ve won it in just four of the last 22 games. To his credit, Sirianni recognizes the issue here and has said playing like this isn’t going to sustainably lead to winning. But he doesn’t appear to have any answers to stop it from continuing to happen.
• The Eagles do not play smart. They’ve been the more penalized team in three out of their four games this season. Isaiah Rodgers obviously deserves a lot of blame for his special teams mistake that led to the Bucs recovering a muffed punt. But is it a good sign that he didn’t seem to really know the rules … and then wasn’t even corrected after the fact? And it’s not like the Rodgers gaffe was a totally isolated incident! Later on, Kelee Ringo ran into Cooper DeJean while he was trying to field a punt.

Two things I’ve been thinking about as it relates to Sirianni:

• I really believe that the Eagles didn’t want to fire Sirianni after last season. I know that sounds obvious since he’s still here. But I stress “want” because I think they may have known that they should do it. But sometimes you don’t really want to do the things you know you should do. And therefore you put things off before inevitably having to get around to it.
• I posed this question to my good friend Sheil Kapadia in my postgame podcast appearance on The Ringer’s Philly Special this week: Was the Eagles keeping Sirianni out of character for this organization? Think back to this Jeffrey Lurie quote about Howie Roseman in 2023:

“If he were any less bold, he wouldn’t be my general manager. I don’t believe in that. I believe you really need to identify what can make you really successful and go for it. And then if it’s not, if it’s a missed call, a player that gets injured, a misevaluation, you then get back together and figure out how you can make up for that in a big way. … I mean, there’s 32 teams. You don’t want to be 8-8.”

And think about how Lurie believes in the kind of aggressive game management strategy that he publicly backed before Doug Pederson went out and then executed it in 2017.

Keeping Sirianni wasn’t the bold choice. It wasn’t going for it on fourth down.

It would’ve taken more courage to decide that the head coach who was coming off a Super Bowl appearance and his third straight playoff berth wasn’t taking the team in the right direction.

Instead, it looks like Lurie played it safe and either punted or kicked a field goal.

VIC FANGIO AND BASICALLY THE ENTIRE DEFENSE

Figured this part from my “10 things to watch when the Eagles play the Buccaneers” preview might be worth revisiting:

The Eagles used a lot of heavier fronts (5-man and even 6-man defensive line alignments) against a Saints offense that’s using 11 personnel at just 33.3% of the time, which ranks 30th among NFL teams.

Under new offensive coordinator Liam Coen, who’s taken over for Dave Canales, the Bucs are using 11 personnel at the third-highest rate in the league (per Sumer Sports).

The Eagles have struggled to defend out of 11 personnel.

[…]

Fangio’s adjustments worked really, really well against the Saints. Part of that success seemed attributable to an especially convenient matchup for the Eagles, however. That might not be the same case here, so, we’ll see how Fangio adjusts and fares in this setup.

So, it seems like the Eagles might not be able to effectively defend the most common personnel package in the NFL. Not ideal!

The Eagles’ defense had no answers against the Bucs’ offense from the jump. On their opening touchdown drive, Tampa went 79 yards in 10 plays while reaching third down just twice: one 3rd-and-1 and one 3rd-and-2. On the next drive, the Bucs went 80 yards in just five plays (four first downs, one second down) to take a 14 to 0 lead. Incredibly little resistance.

Unlike some previous games, the Eagles’ lacking pass rush wasn’t even the biggest culprit here. Not to suggest that that unit played great but it’s clear they didn’t stand much of a chance to get home with the ball coming out lightning quick:

The Eagles seemingly did not expect Mayfield to get rid of the ball that fast.

But, uh, perhaps they should’ve seen it coming since they’re playing off coverage more than any other team!

Fangio was obviously excellent last week. But that’s one good game in four tries this season.

And whereas it’s easy to envision how the offense can get back on track, it’s hard to be as optimistic about the defense’s outlook. It’s not all Fangio; there are talent issues here as well. But the defensive coordinator is a significant part of the problem.

Now for some quick hitters since I looped “basically the entire defense” into this Fangio section:

• Darius Slay got beat by Trey Palmer for a touchdown. The Bucs demoted Palmer to WR4 this year; he entered this game with just one reception.
• Avonte Maddox continues to look like a liability.
• Nakobe Dean led the Eagles in missed tackles with five. The Eagles missed 16 as a team, per NFL Next Gen Stats. He also looked slow in coverage.
• C.J. Gardner-Johnson has already tied a career-high for touchdowns allowed with three. According to Pro Football Reference, quarterbacks have a 153.3 passer rating when throwing CJGJ’s way.
• Bryce Huff logged his first solo tackle! But he still have zero sacks, zero QB hits, and zero TFLs.

JALEN HURTS

It is no small deal that he was missing A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Lane Johnson. Hurts will probably be better when those guys are back.

But the reality is that the situation isn’t always going to be perfect for a quarterback. The Eagles didn’t pay Hurts one quarter of a billion dollars with that expectation that he can only have success if everything goes right around him. The best quarterbacks are able to elevate their teammates and do more with less.

Could Hurts reasonably have done more to help the Eagles get off to a better start? Yes. And quite literally on the first play when he had Saquon Barkley open deep and … just threw the ball out of bounds?!

A really bad miss.

Hurts continues to be a turnover machine, logging his 27th giveaway over his last 22 games. And his latest fumble came at a moment that killed the Eagles’ chances of making it a one-possession game late in the third quarter.

The Eagles need more from Hurts. Fortunately, he’s clearly on the same page with Sirianni when it comes to righting the ship.

Forget where Hurts ranks among all players at his position for a moment and just think about where he ranks in the NFC East. He’s the third-best quarterback right now behind Jayden Daniels and Dak Prescott. How many teams are competing at a high level with the third best quarterback in their division?

Speaking of Daniels, by the way …

KELLEN MOORE

Moore deserves blame for his part in an offense that opened the game with four three-and-outs on their first five drives. From those, the Eagles ran 12 plays that netted ZERO yards. How is that even possible. Did we really see Moore cook up anything to try to account for being undermanned? And for all the excuses we can make about the Eagles missing key players, the Bucs were banged up too. Tampa was missing two of their best defenders in All-Pro safety Antoine Winfield Jr. and 2023 first-round pick Calijah Kancey.

THE OFFENSIVE LINE

Hurts got sacked six times and was strip-sacked twice. Part of that is on the QB and part of that is on the line. Fred Johnson allowed 11 total pressures on 38 pass blocking snaps, according to PFF’s charting.

AVONTE MADDOX


Already touched on him a bit but just wanted to take an extra moment to point out how wild it is that the Eagles have relied upon Maddox so heavily this season. This is a player they cut earlier this year, who then received little interest on the open market, only to re-sign in Philly, and then lose his status as the top nickel in training camp with Quinyon Mitchell overtaking him in that role … only to then get the job back by default with Mitchell moving outside. And then Maddox playing 90% of the snaps in three of the Eagles’ games so far! And their best game coming when he played his lowest snap count percentage! Teams have clearly been picking on Maddox in coverage. The Eagles need to give DeJean a look as the nickel cornerback after the bye. It’s a bit concerning the rookie hasn’t gotten the chance already.

DARIUS SLAY

After Sunday’s loss, Slay took to Twitter to remind everyone how great he is. That’s only the kind of leadership you can get from a team captain.

JAHAN DOTSON

So, I have a hard time believing Dotson isn’t at least somewhat better than his current stats indicate. But maybe he’s not very good? Whether it’s his fault or not, the bottom line is that he’s not producing, and that’s a problem.

HOWIE ROSEMAN

Roseman’s offseason is not really looking amazing. The Saquon signing obviously looks excellent so far. Outside of that? Bryce Huff might be a free agent bust. CJGJ has had more downs than ups. Devin White got $3.5 million guaranteed and he hasn’t even played a snap for the Eagles … and might never do so? Kenny Pickett looked bad in training camp and preseason. Dotson has basically been useless.

Quinyon Mitchell looks like a hit and that’s important. How about previous draft picks, though? Jalen Carter has certainly flashed elite potential but isn’t consistently putting it together yet. Jordan Davis and Nolan Smith have been disappointments.

The head coach and quarterback deserve a lot of blame but let’s not forget to include the GM in that conversation.

MICHAEL CLAY

Special teams has not been so special like they were last year. The Eagles had a punt get blocked last week and they had the Rodgers and Ringo errors in this one. In fairness, the ST unit did also come up with the Eagles’ first returned two-point conversion in franchise history after Rodgers blocked a PAT kick and Ringo took it to the house.

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I DON’T KNOWS

ISAIAH RODGERS

Really bad and dumb mistake to try to shove the Bucs player into DeJean to draw a penalty. That said, he did block a PAT kick that gave the Eagles two points and he almost had another block on Tampa’s field goal.

KELEE RINGO

Ran into DeJean on a punt return and could’ve caused another muff for a Bucs recovery. But he did have a pretty great run back on the returned two-point conversion. Did a really nice job of managing to stay in bounds. And that two-point play kept it a two-possession game.

COOPER DEJEAN

Again, a bit troubling that he hasn’t been able to get on the field over Maddox. He missed time in training camp, yeah, but it’s time to see what he’s got. If he’s not playing more after the bye, well, that’s an issue.

PARRIS CAMPBELL

He’s averaging 5.0 yards per reception (six catches for 30 yards) after averaging 5.2 last year. Not very good. But, hey, he caught a touchdown for the first time since November 13, 2022. He did a nice job of uncovering himself on that play. And Hurts is actually willing to throw the ball his way, so, he’s got that going for him. Campbell is out of practice squad elevations so we’ll see if the Eagles decide to actually sign him to the roster or not.