When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers begin defense of their Super Bowl crown on Sunday during the NFL’s Super Wild-Card Weekend, they’ll be matched with an opponent that they’ve already beaten this season.
The Bucs will square off against the Philadelphia Eagles at noon CST Sunday at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla. On Oct. 14, Tampa Bay defeated the Eagles 28-22 in Philadelphia.
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The loss dropped the Eagles to 2-4 for the 2021 NFL season. But Philadelphia rallied to reach the playoffs, and the head coaches for Sunday’s game said the development of Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts during his first full season as an NFL starter went a long way toward making that happen.
Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni said Hurts was “significantly” different now than when the Eagles played Tampa Bay three months ago.
“He’s definitely gotten better throughout that time, which doesn’t surprise me at all because Jalen’s a student of the game,” Sirianni said. “Jalen wants to get better, craves to get better. He’s got high football character, and, like I’ve said plenty of times, guys that are tough, guys that have high football character and guys who love football are going to reach their ceiling, so I think you’re just seeing him grow closer and closer to his ceiling. Yeah, he’s definitely better, and he’s just going to continue to get better because of who he is as a person and as a player.”
Against Tampa Bay the first time around, Hurts completed 12-of-26 passes for 115 yards with one touchdown and one interception and ran 10 times for 44 yards and two touchdowns.
“Dramatic improvement,” Bucs coach Bruce Arians said when asked what he’d seen from Hurts since Tampa Bay’s trip to Philadelphia. “Total command of that offense. Really accurate down the field. Really improved as a passer, but he knows when to pull it down and he knows when to throw it. I’ve seen great growth out of him.”
In its loss to the Buccaneers, Philadelphia had 100 rushing yards and 113 passing yards, and the Eagles have exceeded both those figures in every game since, especially in running the football.
In its 11 games since losing to Tampa Bay, Philadelphia has averaged 184.8 rushing yards. The Eagles ended the 2021 regular season on top of the NFL with 2,715 rushing yards and 25 rushing touchdowns.
“I think as an offense we’ve just kind of revolutionized and evolved in terms of who we are, our identity,” Hurts said. “I’ve said it all year. I’ve said it’s coming. I’ve said different things to kind of ignite the growth in where we are now. Early on, we were kind of searching for who we were, what we wanted to do, how we wanted to do it, and now we kind of fine-tuned some things and we’ve gotten good at doing a lot of different things, so like I said earlier, I think it just comes down to us executing our job, us knowing our job and doing our job, play with the right fundamentals and play the type of football we’ve been playing.”
During the regular season, Hurts completed 265-of-432 passes for 3,144 yards with 16 touchdowns and nine interceptions and ran for 784 yards and 10 touchdowns on 139 carries.
The former Alabama standout was the leading rusher for the NFL’s leading rushing team. In NFL history, it was the 10th time that a quarterback had at least 784 rushing yards in a season and the 11th time that a quarterback had run for at least 10 touchdowns in a season. But it was only the second time that a quarterback had done both in the same season, following the 819 rushing yards and 11 TD runs by Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray in the 2020 season.
While Hurts led Philadelphia in rushing, the Eagles were the only team in the NFL that had five players with at least 200 rushing yards in 2021. Miles Sanders had 754 rushing yards, former Gardendale High School and UAB standout Jordan Howard 406, Boston Scott 373 and Kenneth Gainwell 291.
“I think for us, we put ourselves in a great position in being where we are right now,” Hurts said on Wednesday. “We know how far we’ve come as a team, as an offense, as a defense, as a special-teams group, and we just want to continue to do the things that have gotten us here -- focusing on the process, focusing on getting better every day, focusing on the fundamentals, all the little things we talk about. Doing those little things this week so we can put ourselves in position to win this game.”
After 19 regular-season starts, Hurts will be under center for his first NFL postseason game on Sunday. Across the field, Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady will make his 46th playoff start. With Brady at 44 years old and Hurts at 23, Sunday’s game will feature the largest age gap for the starting quarterbacks of any game in NFL postseason history.
In three seasons at Alabama and one at Oklahoma, Hurts played on teams that participated in the College Football Playoff four times, the CFP title game three times and conference championship contests three times.
“Any experience I’ve had prior to coming into the NFL,” Hurts said, “all those games played in college at Oklahoma and Alabama and being on some very big stages, I think all of those things have kind of helped me. I definitely want to use those things to my benefit going into this game. Regardless of the stage, regardless of what the name of the game is, it’s about the Philadelphia Eagles executing to the best of their abilities, having the right focus throughout the week and just having the right type of preparation.”
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
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