The Eagles are ill-prepared on offense and defense. After Isaiah Rodgers’ punt return blunder, add in special teams, too.

TAMPA, Fla. — Isaiah Rodgers said that he thought pushing Josh Hayes into Eagles punt returner Cooper DeJean was a “savvy veteran move” to draw a penalty on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gunner.

Rodgers was correct in that a penalty was initially called. But a quick conference between officials after replays showed that the Eagles cornerback doing exactly what he said he did — unwittingly — resulted in the flag getting picked up.

DeJean had signaled for a fair catch, but when Hayes hit him, the ball went through his arms and was recovered by Tampa Bay at the Eagles’ 22-yard line.

It was, at the time, a devastating turnover for the Eagles because their defense, after allowing the Bucs to score touchdowns on their first two drives, had finally forced a punt. They had started another game sluggishly and trailed, 14-0, before thousands of fans had even settled into their seats.

» READ MORE: Hayes: Nick Sirianni’s Eagles remain undisciplined, unacceptable, and unwatchable. Should he be fired?

But a late first-quarter change of possession offered the Eagles offense a chance to finally get a first down and put points on the scoreboard.

Until Rodgers’ anything-but-savvy moment.

“I played gunner before, and knowing that, if you’re the gunner and you hit the punt returner, it’s a flag,” said Rodgers, who later at least partially made up for his blunder with a blocked extra point that was returned for two points. “So I kind of thought to myself in that situation, ‘Hey, push him into Coop and get the flag.’”

In a game full of mistakes by the Eagles, from missed tackles to turnovers to actual penalties, Rodgers’ blunder and his postgame explanation was the most egregious. He made those decisions on his own, but they were representative of a team that looked ill-prepared in a 33-16 loss to the Bucs on Sunday.

Told of Rodgers’ comments, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni corrected his player.

“You’ve still got to play by the rules of what you do,” Sirianni said. “We made a mistake there. Any time you have contact into them, they’re going to pick that flag up every single time. … But a couple things went into that.

“We’ve got to make sure that we’re coaching it better. With the guys that make a mistake out there, we’re going to look at ourselves first and we’ll get that cleaned up.”

That special-teams mishap may be the least of what the 2-2 Eagles need to clean up heading into the bye week. Their defense was toothless and picked apart by the quick-passing Baker Mayfield. Their offense was shorthanded with A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Lane Johnson sidelined, but quarterback Jalen Hurts was unable to overcome some of his worst tendencies.

And the combination of the two — along with special teams allowing game-turning negative plays in consecutive weeks — has the Eagles without an identity other than that they’re not particularly well-coached.

“I think it’s early. I think there’s a lot of teams’ stories unwritten,” Sirianni said. “You have some base things that you do well. But to say that we know what our identity is — we need to figure out what we do well and try to continue to do that.

“See what we don’t do well, try to get out of that, and mesh some things together.”

A good place to start would be at the beginning of games. The Eagles have yet to score a first-quarter point through four games and have been outscored by 23-0 in that frame. Their scripts on offense have been lacking in imagination, and their defense has — for the most part — played on its heels.

A week ago, defensive coordinator Vic Fangio seemed to figure out what worked best for his unit — at least against the Saints. But the Bucs were savvy enough to not allow the Eagles to get early-down run stops and made sure that a suspect back seven was forced to tackle in space.

So Mayfield got the ball out quickly and linebacker Nakobe Dean, cornerbacks Avonte Maddox and Darius Slay, and safeties C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Reed Blankenship all failed to make makeable stops.

“Just to tackle well. Try to get after the quarterback,” Sirianni said when asked what the defensive game plan was. “Listen, we didn’t do a good enough job on that. But it’s always going to start with fundamentals of how we get off blocks, how we defeat blocks, how we tackle.”

Fundamentals? At this level? At this stage of the season?

How about putting the players in positions in which they can succeed? Fangio hardly had his cornerbacks challenge at the line — at least until it was too late. Gardner-Johnson said the Eagles expected the Bucs to come out and attack them underneath through the air.

But defensive tackle Jalen Carter, who was dominant last week, and decidedly less so on Sunday — partly because the Bucs neutralized him with double-team blocks — said the D-linemen thought the Bucs would try and run on them.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ defensive players are honest after collapse: ‘We let ourselves down’

“On the D-line, we always think teams going to try to run the ball on us,” Carter said, “and when they didn’t come out running the ball, it was a shocker.”

A shocker? The Bucs entered with one of the worst run offenses in the NFL — ranked 29th in defense-adjusted value over average.

Of course, it wasn’t all on Sirianni, Fangio, offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, and special teams coordinator Michael Clay. The Eagles have obvious holes in personnel. The losses on offense were obviously going to test the team’s depth, particularly at receiver.

But the lack of depth at the position had been pointed out for months and it was only until right before the season that general manager Howie Roseman traded for Jahan Dotson as the third receiver. He had just two catches for 11 yards against the Bucs and has only five catches for 25 yards this season.

The Eagles defense got gassed quickly. In the first quarter alone, they were on the field for 21 plays vs. six for the Bucs defense. It was hot and it was humid and even the offense was eventually affected. Carter and center Cam Jurgens left with cramps in the second half. Gardner-Johnson was spotted hooked up to an IV after the game.

“Gassed ain’t the word, man,” Gardner-Johnson said. “I lost a lot of fuel, man. It’s something we’ve got to prepare ourselves for training-wise. We’re doing everything we can. It’s just the heat beat us today. And obviously the [Bucs] came out and played their game.”

Sirianni wasn’t using the conditions as an excuse.

“There were guys on both sides going down,” Sirianni said. “As far as the cramping and with the heat, we did what we normally do … with our hydration throughout the week. I know this team’s in good shape because they work their [butt] off to be in good shape with the way we practice.”

Practices that Fangio repeatedly cautioned weren’t long or strenuous enough.

And then there’s Hurts, whose seven turnovers lead the NFL and who has had at least one in his last nine regular-season games dating back to last November. His third-quarter fumble in the red zone essentially snuffed out any chance the Eagles had of coming back.

The turnover wasn’t all on the quarterback, of course. Running back Saquon Barkley failed to block blitzing linebacker Lavonte David. And Hurts, after he evaded David, didn’t have two hands on the ball because he was cocked to throw when he was stripped.

But did he have to force this issue on first down?

“That’s not on Jalen,” Sirianni said. “Jalen gets credited for that.”

Hurts, to his credit, took the blame. But Sirianni’s excuse-filled response about the fumble calls into question how corrections are being made in the quarterback room. Sirianni isn’t in there much anymore, but what kind of relationship does exist between coach and quarterback to address what needs to be fixed?

» READ MORE: Jalen Hurts falls on the sword after another turnover plagues another Eagles defeat

“We have our moments,” Hurts said.

As for other corrections that need to be made during the break, there may be big-picture ones, but first the details — like Rodgers’ error — need to be addressed. He said his coaches didn’t specifically point out on the sideline what he could have done differently.

“I don’t really think it was more so coming at me and just telling me the corrections,” Rodgers said. “At the end of the day, they picked [the flag] up. We can’t change the call. So it’s really just moving forward.”

DeJean said that maybe he could have signaled for a fair catch earlier. The rookie was pressed into duty a week ago when Britain Covey suffered a shoulder injury. He handled many punts in college and said he didn’t see Hayes coming at him.

“No, no. I’m just focused on catching the ball,” DeJean said. “It’s tough to see that coming. So it’s kind of shocking.”

The next time he had to field a punt, teammate Kelee Ringo also ran into him, although DeJean had let the ball hit the ground by that point. He might have wanted to avoid another possible muff.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re catching the punt and fair catching in the right time,” Sirianni said. “And then Isaiah can’t do what he did in that particular case. He’ll be the first one to tell you guys that.”

Rodgers apparently didn’t get the message.