The Eagles left the field in Tampa on Sunday the same way they did after their lone playoff game back in January: Taking a long, quiet walk back to the locker room after getting completely dismantled by the Buccanneers, this time 33-16.
After that Wild Card defeat nine months ago, the Eagles were at a crossroads. A team with title expectations had utterly imploded, Jason Kelce looked to be at the end of the line, and though we didn't know it just yet, Fletcher Cox was too, all while Nick Sirianni was on a hot seat that hit supernova less than a year removed from a Super Bowl appearance from running a group that suddenly couldn't run anything.
The organization spent the whole summer trying to course correct, and training camp brought genuine optimism that things were going to be better (granted, it usually always does), but four weeks into the season, the Eagles have just driven themselves in a circle back to that same intersection.
Now all the worst thoughts about what the Eagles really are have crept in, with two full weeks to let it all fester thanks to an early bye – though maybe that's an early mercy, too.
They aren't Super Bowl contenders, not right now they're not. They're not even the second-best team in their division because Washington started cashing in on its promise with Jayden Daniels early.
Right now the Eagles are sitting there as an expensive, rudderless ship still plagued by many of the same problems that sent them spiraling in the back half of last season, but have themselves leaning on overall talent to bail them out of all of it.
It just got them by in two games so far (Packers and Saints), blew up in their face in another (Falcons), then left them embarrassed in the fourth on Sunday against the Bucs.
They can't sustain that. It won't carry them, not for another 13 games.
"No excuse for that," Sirianni said after Sunday's loss. "We didn't coach well enough and we didn't play well enough."
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But going back over the last 12 months now, that's hardly the first time, which is a major and ever-increasing concern.
A defense that was supposed to be much fiercer and have much better structure under veteran coordinator Vic Fangio instead got gashed by Tampa on Sunday for 445 total yards.
Bucs targets Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Trey Palmer, and Cade Otton found repeated holes in coverage on posts and corner routes, which quarterback Baker Mayfield made good on to pick the Eagles apart. Not even a minute into the second quarter, it was already 21-0, Tampa.
Making matters worse, the Eagles' tackling was just abysmal, while Brandon Graham continues to be the most consistent focal point of their pass rush up front – when in presumably his last season at age 36, he really shouldn't be.
Avonte Maddox had Godwin locked up on a screen but took a dive at his target and went sailing past him instead, which turned into a 28-yard Bucs gain. Bucs running backs Bucky Irving and Rachaad White took the ball and shrugged guys right off in the first and second levels, and on Tampa's third touchdown drive, when its offense had gotten fully in rhythm, Mayfield kept it himself on a 4th and goal fake and dragged Reed Blankenship along to break the plane.
They looked wholly unprepared – ditto for an unaware special teams unit – and once that hole was dug, you just knew there was no coming back.
"We let ourselves down and were just beating ourselves from the quick game," Maddox said.
An offense that looked like it was going to be one of the most dynamic in the league between Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert, major free-agent signing Saquon Barkley, and new coordinator Kellen Moore as the play-caller, feels like it's mostly been treading water so far.
Barkley has absolutely been everything as advertised, and a big reason why the Eagles pulled out the two wins they did.
The overall unit, however, hasn't established any particular flow. Starting off slow and disjointed out of the gate, and then somehow patching a rally together on the back of a couple of big plays has been the common theme for when the Eagles have the ball. They've yet to score in the first quarter through four games in 2024, only scraped past 30 points once back in Week 1, and when they were down major pieces in Brown, Smith, and Lane Johnson like they were on Sunday, it was like the whole operation ceased up.
The Eagles didn't have a single first down until late in the first half, had barely moved the ball forward, too, while Hurts once again faced a Todd Bowles-led Tampa defense that he knew was going to blitz him constantly, just like last year, but once again had little answer for – just like last year.
He got sacked six times – didn't throw an interception this week, at least – and until he found Parris Campbell in the back of the end zone on the Eagles' scoring drive late into the first half, he struggled to get the ball out quickly or connect on much.
Without Brown or Smith there to blow something open in coverage or create opportunity, Hurts looked lost, and nowhere close to his 2022 MVP-caliber form that made everything look so effortless.
"I didn't play good enough," Hurts said at the podium postgame. "That's what it comes down to."
But the big picture, and scary, concern for fans is this script has played out in disaster before.
Carson Wentz was well on his way to earning NFL MVP in 2017 before the ACL tear stopped him short. The Eagles won the Super Bowl behind an unreal run from Nick Foles, but Wentz was still the franchise QB coming back and the team looked poised to contend for years with him under center.
But that didn't happen. The Eagles stayed on the playoff bubble until they completely unraveled in 2020, all while Wentz's game just fell apart and his relationship with former coach Doug Pederson fractured.
Five years later, the Eagles rebounded and made it back to the Super Bowl with Hurts. They fell just short, but he was their new face of the franchise, with the big contract to show for it.
Then 2023 crashed and burned. He never looked quite the same and kept his answers short whenever it came to any questions about the dynamic between him and Sirianni, though highly interpretable as a consequence.
And after Sunday's disaster, he didn't exactly do much to put that fire out.
"We have our moments," Hurts said in response to a question of what talks would be like between him and his head coach on the team's identity heading into the bye.
This really shouldn't feel like the end of the world. The Eagles are 2-2, they have two weeks now to regroup and recover, and with a ton of football still to play.
But they left the field in Tampa on Sunday the same way they did nine months ago: Dejected after getting thoroughly figured out.
And fans have seen this script before. It's not good.
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