The Eagles have a two-week break after a disaster of a 33-16 loss to the Bucs, and in turn, everyone probably needs a break from them after that, too.
They're 2-2 and with a lot of season left to play, but frustratingly so. They can turn this around, but after all those missed tackles, all those holes in soft coverage, those baffling special teams miscues, and an offense that just can't seem to consistently function, the chances don't exactly feel great right now.
It is a long two weeks to try and figure something out though. You just have to hope that they're ready to play once their turn is back up against the Browns on the 13th – while, admittedly, most of the focus is across the street.
Here are a few odds and ends about the Eagles as they try to regroup through the bye...
No fear
Bucs receiver Mike Evans was mic'd up for his team last week, and this clip with Quinyon Mitchell in particular has been making the rounds across the Eagles' social media sphere:
The Eagles' secondary has left a lot to be desired, but Mitchell has been an early bright spot.
After getting thrown straight into the fire during training camp with regular assignments against A.J.Brown and DeVonta Smith, Mitchell took the field for Week 1 in Brazil and hasn't backed down from anyone.
The first-rounder stuck to his Green Bay assignments and held no reservations about getting right in the Packers' faces about it after the whistle.
That approach hasn't gone anywhere in the several weeks since, and even though Tampa was rough for a whole ton of reasons, Mitchell continues to take on a lot and hold his own, even against one of the NFL's best veteran receivers.
The Isaiah incident
The Eagles' defense finally forced a stop and caught a break. Tampa had to punt, and while the ball was in the air, rookie Cooper DeJean as the returner signaled for the fair catch.
DeJean was focused on catching the ball for the spot with Bucs tackler Josh Hayes closing in, then Isaiah Rodgers, running with his blocking assignment, thought to push Hayes into DeJean instead.
DeJean's left leg spun out from under him and he fumbled the ball as it was coming down. The Bucs recovered, and although a flag was thrown initially for Tampa contact on the fair catch, which was Rodgers' aim, the refs picked it up upon agreement that Rodgers had intentionally shoved Hayes into the returner.
The Bucs got the ball back at the Philadelphia 22 and scored immediately to make it 21-0. Rodgers said afterward that he "never heard that before" of a fair catch penalty getting waived off because of a push into contact.
Rodgers was on the return unit, didn't know his job, and put his team in an even deeper hole with just an outright bad decision no matter how you look at it.
So when special teams coordinator Michael Clay met with the media earlier this week, questions went right to what happened there with Rodgers.
"In terms of the coaching aspect, whenever a player says he doesn't understand, you kinda take it to heart as a coach. From his aspect, I view it in two different ways: I know he started by saying he's been playing gunner a lot in this league, and if he's talking from the gunner's perspective, he's a thousand percent correct. You can push the defender into the returner without cause of penalty.
Where I probably failed him and the team is I didn't differentiate when we talk gunner work and vise work, what we want. If he has confusion on that, it falls on me as a coach not being able to explain it correctly where he understands, from a gunner's aspect, a thousand percent corret. You can push a vise player into the returner. From a vise standpoint or a jammer standpoint, we never want to put our own player at a disadvantage by throwing somebody into Cooper.
Again, it falls on me to be able to articulate the big difference to him if there's any misconception on what the rules and the understanding is."
Basically, the defense here is that Rodgers was approaching his position on the return unit like he was still a gunner on the kicking unit trying to cause a fumble, except he was trying to draw a penalty in this case.
The problem is, none of that logic applies.
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The best-case scenario that could've happened there was getting the flag because the refs didn't know the rules either, which would've been a longshot. Obviously, Rodgers didn't.
The worst-case scenario that played out was that the Eagles lost a fumble at an awful time and in an awful spot, and they paid for it.
Another way that could've went wrong: DeJean gets hurt.
There was just no awareness there, and it left everyone from Rodgers to Clay to Nick Sirianni looking horrible walking away from it.
And there was no getting around that, especially not after Kelee Ringo leveled DeJean on another return later on.
"Isaiah's been doing this for a while in this league, so it's just one of those things where we just can't have that happen," Clay added. "Two weeks in a row it's kinda snowballed where special teams has kinda affected it in a bad way, but I think the cool thing about the NFL – you have the Kelee incident, the Isaiah incident – they come back and they have a huge play on that field goal block."
It was a PAT block after a Bucs touchdown to go up 30-14, for the record, and it stood as pretty inconsequential.
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