Eagles fans are spoiled at this point. That’s not a knock in the slightest. That’s a place of envy. The fan base has yet to lose their edge even as they’ve won two Super Bowls within a decade and are attempting to hoist back-to-back Lombardi Trophies this upcoming winter. That’s admirable. The Birds have run laps around the NFC East rivals who once made their lives miserable. They defeated the Patriots in the Super Bowl after New England beat them once in the Big Game previously. Ditto for the Chiefs. Revenge has been enacted… except for one team.
The Eagles face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, a matchup of 3-0 teams in the sweltering Florida heat.
I hate the Bucs. I’ll be frank about it. They own my brain even after seeing the Eagles morph into a winning machine. The Eagles are 1-4, including the postseason, against Tampa Bay in the Nick Sirianni-Jalen Hurts era. The two playoff losses included in that, both in Tampa, saw the Eagles lose by a combined 39 points.
It obviously goes deeper than that.
There was Ryan Fitzpatrick tossing four touchdowns against the defending champion Eagles back in 2018. Matt Bryant knocked through a 62-yarder in Tampa to give the Bucs a 23-21 win as time expired in 2006 as well. That all sucked, but we must dig a little further…
The 2002 NFC Championship Game. Ronde Barber. Joe Jurevicius. Shutting down Veterans Stadium with a loss. It scarred Eagles fans young and old, a loss that I didn’t recover from until the night of Feb. 4, 2018. It still stands as the formative moment I feel as if I became a deranged Eagles fan even in my youth. It all dated back to that.
That’s from a fan perspective, but I’d imagine the Eagles organization, from the execs down to the coaches and players, have strong feelings about the Buccaneers as well. This team has eliminated them twice from the postseason. The Eagles stood at 2-2 last September after the Bucs crushed them with the whole city wanting to fire Sirianni and clean house. They, of course, went on an all-time tear and won it all, but that game was really the lone mark on an otherwise wire-to-wire dominant season. It felt like rock bottom after the disastrous finish to the 2023 campaign, which ended in humiliating fashion against these Buccaneers, too!
Crush them on Sunday. Tampa Bay will still probably win the atrocious NFC South, so they’ll be in the playoff mix, too. Bring them to Lincoln Financial Field in January while we’re at it! Is that tempting fate? Perhaps, but a beatdown or two from a team that’s long held a cloud over the Eagles would help them switch into full-on stream-rolling juggernaut mode in my mind.
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