Eagles trounced by the Bucs 32-9 and crash out of the playoffs. What changes are coming next?

TAMPA, Fla. — The Eagles are out of time.

Two years removed from a playoff loss at Raymond James Stadium that preceded the Eagles’ rapid rise, things came crashing down at the same location. The 32-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gives way to an offseason of uncertainty.

The team couldn’t exorcise the demons that propped up progressively throughout the season. The offense looked stagnant and futile against Todd Bowles’ blitz-heavy scheme and the defense continued to surrender banner days to mediocre offenses.

By the midway point of the fourth quarter, the ESPN broadcast’s shots of the dejected, sometimes irate, Eagles sideline and owner’s box told more about this team than the product on the field. After losing six of their last seven games, the Eagles need to change.

With the offseason now upon them, where might that change come?

The Eagles’ unsolved problems against the blitz will remain just that.

Unsolved.

One week after Jalen Hurts struggled to find a rhythm against the Giants’ blitz-heavy defense, the offensive game plan continued to prioritize vertical shots when facing extra rushers during the early portion of the game.

The offense eventually found some footing attacking the Bucs’ aggressiveness with short completions over the middle, but was still incapable of sustaining drives as Bowles dialed up blitzes with regularity.

Without A.J. Brown, the Eagles offense looked somewhere between the version of itself that foundered throughout a 31-15 wildcard-round loss to the Bucs in the 2021-22 season and the one that limped into the playoffs this year.

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni suggested the team would rely on its “physical, violent” identity going into the game, but it took nearly three quarters for the Eagles to reach double-digit rushing attempts. After rushing for 201 yards in the first meeting between these teams in Week 3, the Eagles managed just 13 rushing attempts for 34 yards.

DeVonta Smith was a lone bright spot for the offense through much of the game. The receiver caught a 55-yard pass that set up a Dallas Goedert touchdown and capped off a 148-yard performance.

Miscommunications and a porous coverage in the middle of the field doomed the Eagles defense, just as it did for the entirety of the 2023 season.

The former cost the Eagles late in the second quarter when safety Kevin Byard burned a timeout on a third-and-10 after a late substitution left the defense disorganized. The Eagles ran out of time on their ensuing two-minute drive partially as a result of the wasted timeout.

In the first half, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield averaged 13.6 yards per completion when targeting receivers in the middle of the field, consistently finding gaps between linebacking duo Zach Cunningham and Nicholas Morrow or the safety combo of Kevin Byard and Avonte Maddox.

The ugliest sequence came on Tampa Bay receiver David Moore’s 44-yard touchdown catch, when Maddox ran into cornerback Eli Ricks, upending the undrafted rookie and causing a busted coverage.

It wasn’t much better on the perimeter for the Eagles’ secondary, either. A handful of drops from the Buccaneers kept things from being even uglier, but several missed tackles from the defensive secondary underscored the shaky performance. Tampa Bay finished the regular season ranked 20th in scoring and were held to just nine points in their regular-season finale against the 2-15 Carolina Panthers. Against the Eagles, they managed 426 total yards.

Sirianni wanted the Eagles to be physical and violent.

Defensively, they were anything but.

Missed tackles plagued the defense throughout the night, but none may have been as costly as James Bradberry whiffing against Tampa Bay receiver Trey Palmer, who discarded Bradberry’s arm tackle en route to a 56-yard touchdown with the game still hanging in the balance. Palmer’s score made it 25-9 going into the fourth quarter once again laid bare the personnel problems the Eagles defense has faced.

Bradberry spent the evening rotating with rookie cornerback Kelee Ringo and Ricks, sometimes serving as a quasi-linebacker in sub packages. He got beat deep by Bucs receiver Mike Evans on the second series of the game, but Evans dropped the go ball from Mayfield.

The Eagles went into the game with an apparent advantage along the offensive line, but were overmatched up front with the Bucs consistently sending blitzes their way.

The offense averaged just 3.2 yards per carry on 15 attempts and Hurts faced pressure consistently. Although there was an apparent imbalance between run calls and passing plays earlier in the game, the run game set the Eagles well behind the chains on multiple occasions.

Late in the third quarter, the Bucs sent a rare four-man rush and still got pressure on Hurts on a third-and-6 from the Eagles’ own 14-yard line. Hurts backpedaled into the end zone and panicked as Tampa Bay linebacker Anthony Nelson wrestled him to the ground. Hurts was charged with an intentional grounding penalty in the end zone, resulting in a costly safety that set up a two-play scoring drive from the Bucs to put the game out of reach.

Eagles cornerback Darius Slay left midway through the fourth quarter, requiring a cart to get off the field. The 33-year-old was despondent after suffering the injury. He grabbed at his lower half, although it wasn’t apparent what the injury was.

Slay missed the last four games after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery but made his return for the Bucs game. Players from both the Eagles and Buccaneers crowded around Slay just before he was carted off to show their support.

Wide receiver Julio Jones left the game in the second quarter with a concussion and didn’t return. Jones took a hard hit on a 14-yard catch and was slow to get up, although he eventually jogged off to the sideline after getting looked at by Tampa Bay trainers for a moment.

Goedert also suffered an injury late in the fourth quarter. He walked off on his own power but did not return.