Winners and losers: 8 takeaways from Eagles loss in Week 4

The Philadelphia Eagles took a little trip to Tampa Bay in Week 4, and boy was it terrible. Aside from a few splash plays here and there, everything was awful. The offense was largely unproductive, uninspired, and unoriginal. The defense wasn’t physical, fast, or remotely effective. Special teams was a trainwreck. Everything, from start to finish, was just terrible.

It’d be easy to sit here and say Nick Sirianni is a loser, and that’s because he is. He failed to get his team ready for this game. He seemingly forgot that the sun exists, that Florida exists, or that Florida is hot in September. The least he could do is take a page out of Tom Herman’s book and make a pee color chart.

That’s just the physical stuff. He didn’t come into this game with a game plan on offense or defense. He didn’t clean up Special Teams problems. He simply didn’t do his job. If you want to throw him an undeserved bone, he also didn’t make any blatantly incorrect or otherwise moronic fourth-down decisions… so that’s cool. It’d be easy to just say that Nick Sirianni did a terrible job, but he wasn’t the only one. 

A gutting loss to the Buccaneers exposes the Eagles losers. 

Calling it a ‘Losing Effort’ by the Eagles is disingenuous because it implies that they tried. This was closer to the Little Giants at the beginning of the movie. Everyone farted around and looked awful. 

There were a lot of losers in Week 4, but when things are that bad, you have to spin the negative things into positive things to try to maintain some semblance of sanity. Let’s give it a shot.

Winner: Rookie hazing

The Eagles drafted Cooper DeJean with the 40th pick in the 2024 NFL draft. Britain Covey went to the IR with a shoulder injury, so that meant DeJean was the Eagles’ starting punt returner. His very first rep as a starter went almost as terribly as you could imagine. 

The Eagles’ defense finally forced a three-and-out and the Buccaneers punted to a waiting DeJean who waved his hand for a fair catch. ‘Not so fast, rookie,’ thought Eagles’ backup cornerback Isaiah Rodgers, as he shoved one of the Buccaneers’ gunners into DeJean as he was trying to field the punt. This caused a Three Stooges-esque muffed punt that Tampa Bay recovered and turned into a touchdown five plays later.

It was clear that Rodgers was trying to get a flag for interference and Jeff McClane of The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Rodgers called it a “Savvy veteran move.” That’s equal parts incredibly dumbfounding and hilarious. He purposefully shoved a professional athlete who was running full speed into his teammate who was standing still and he thought he was being sly about it … in front of a semi-full stadium and 30 cameras. It was a phenomenal intentionally stupid play.

DeJean’s hellish time as the punt returner didn’t stop there. At the end of the first half, the Eagles defense got another stop and the Buccaneers once again kicked it to Cooper DeJean who, once again, waved his hand for a fair catch. ‘Hey rookie, welcome to the NFL,’ thought the Eagles' other backup cornerback Kelee Ringo, as he ran face-first into DeJean’s chest.

Luckily this one didn’t end up in a muffed punt, but it looked remarkably worse than the first one. DeJean was getting truly abused by his teammates.

Traditional thinking would have you believe that Isaiah Rodgers and Kelle Ringo would have their comeuppance, but in the ultimate twist of fate, they teamed up to make one of the more impressive plays of the entire NFL season. 

On their first possession of the second half, Tampa scooted down the field with relative ease and scored a touchdown to get a 30-14 lead. On the extra point, Isaiah Rodgers came off the edge and blocked the kick. Ringo grabbed it and returned it 60 yards for two points. 

It was truly unbelievable and a real testament to the football gods that rookie hazing is something that must exist on an NFL team. Richie Incognito is somewhere and smiling the biggest smile.

Winner: Saquon Barkley

Mental health is mental wealth: There was only one actually good thing to come out of this game. It’s Saquon Barkley. It’s only Saquon Barkley. It’s only ever going to be Saquon Barkley.

The guy is absolutely unreal. Vibes were at an all-time low coming out of halftime, and on the Eagles’ first play from scrimmage, Saquon ripped a 59-yard run down to the Buccaneers’ 11-yard line. Three plays later, Jalen Hurts got Brotherly Shoved into the endzone for the Eagles' final touchdown of the game. 

He ended the day with 10 carries for 84 yards and two catches for 34 yards. Why was it just 10 carries? Who knows. It was a game where playmakers were at a premium and the Eagles chose not to give their ball to their biggest playmaker. If you were one of the ‘Saquon shouldn’t carry the ball so many times this early in the season’ people, this is what you asked for. 

To have a running back who is productive in the playoffs, you have to make it to the playoffs. Saquon is clearly going to be paramount in making sure that happens IF that happens.

Loser: Human bodies that crave contact

You don’t want the Eagles’ defense to be out-schemed, and if they are, you want them to make tackles. They were and they didn’t. It turns out, they actually picked up right where they left off against the Buccaneers in 2023, by absolutely and ultimately failing to get anyone on the ground. 

This week it wasn’t even a situation where the Buccaneers had to break arm tackles. Guys were straight-up missing contact completely. If you put a blindfold on them, spun them around, and told them to tackle, the result would be the exact same. It was pathetic.

It’s bad when the broadcast is keeping track of missed tackles. At last count, either Tom Brady or Kevin Burkhardt said there were 13 missed tackles. It sure felt like Avonte Maddox and Nakobe Dean accounted for at least 10 of them.

It was an abysmal performance from everyone, but one thing that’s for sure is that Cooper DeJean needs to get up to speed during the bye week, because Avonte Maddox is a liability, not only in coverage but also when a guy has the ball and is a foot away from him. 

Loser: Jalen Hurts

We have to have a Jalen Hurts conversation and unfortunately, we’ll be doing it for the next two weeks. This was the game where he had the opportunity to show that he could be productive without either of his elite wide receivers. He was 18-of-30 for 158 yards and a touchdown.

In reality, none of that actually matters. What does matter is the turnovers. They’re there, they’re happening consistently, and they’re not going away. 

Four disgustingly true sentences: Jalen Hurts has three turnovers in the red zone this season. He’s turned the ball over in every game this season. He’s turned the ball over in nine straight regular season games. He’s had 27 turnovers in his last 22 games. 

Say what you want about the interceptions ... Some of them are on him, some of them are situational, and some of them are on the receivers. It’s the fumbles that are the biggest issues. 

Now, this year he has been credited with three lost fumbles, but one of those was in Week 1 when Cam Jurgens snapped the ball while Jalen wasn’t expecting it, so you can probably disregard that one. The other two are brutal and caused by his disregard for anyone behind him. 

In this game, he was in the pocket, made Lavonte David miss, thought that meant Lavonte fell into a portal that banished him to a different universe, cocked back to throw, and was (un)surprisingly stripped by Lavonte. It’s bad, and it’s Carson Wentz-esque. 

Fumbling in the red zone when you are on the verge of making it a one-score game is simply inexcusable. The problem is that players who fumble don’t lose that reputation because once a defense knows that about somebody, they hunt for the ball. 

Winner: Bryce Huff

Before this game, Bryce Huff had a total of zero sacks, zero quarterback hits, and half of a tackle. That changed big-time in Week 4. 

With 5:54 remaining in the first quarter, the Eagles $17 million pass rusher came alive. It was a first-and-10 from the Eagles 19-yard line. Baker Mayfield handed the ball to Bucky Irving who ran off the pocket of the right guard.

Guess who was there? Nobody. But after that? It was our boy, Bryce Huff, who got the tackle to make it a four-yard gain. To everyone who said ‘Bryce Huff is a liability against the run,’ just remember that Bryce Huff tackled someone once.

That was it. That’s all he did. He made one single tackle all game. Through four games he has zero sacks, zero quarterback hits, and 1.5 tackles. What a tremendous disappointment and waste of money.

There was one play where it almost looked like he had a quarterback pressure, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that when the advanced stats get released. Knowing Huff, it probably won’t count. 

Winner: A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith

If anyone asked you how you felt about this game going into it, you would probably say something like, ‘Well, the starting receivers are Jahan Dotson, Parris Campbell, John Ross, and Johnny Wilson,’ and then they would respond, ‘Oh, I don’t know who any of those people are. Wasn’t Ross the guy who ran fast at the combine seven years ago?’

We knew Jalen Hurts was going to have trouble getting the passing game going with these wide receivers, but this was so much more brutal than you could imagine. He ended up targeting all of the wide receivers a total of 12 times. Seven of those were completions for 34 yards and a touchdown.

A.J. Brown has had fewer than 34 yards in jus 19 out of 86 career games and 12 of those were when he was with the Titans. DeVonta Smith has had fewer than 34 yards in just 12 out of 58 career games.

If both A.J. and DeVonta walked into Howie Roseman’s office and said, ‘We know you just paid us, but you saw what happened when neither of us were on the field. We deserve more money,’ no one could blame them. They are incredibly important to how this offense functions and this game emphasized it even more than anyone could imagine.

Loser: Howie Roseman

Going into this season, a big question was, ‘What about WR3? What happens if A.J. or DeVonta are out? What if both A.J. AND DeVonta are out? Who’s going to step in as WR2 or WR1?’ On August 22, 2024, Howie had an answer … it was a wrong answer, but it was an answer. He traded a third-round pick to the Commanders for Jahan Dotson. 

In his four games as an Eagle, Dotson has five catches for 25 yards. Two of those catches and 11 of those yards came in Week 4. 

You can argue that he’s added value being on the field, and you might be right. He ran a rub route against the Saints to spring Dallas Goedert open for his huge catch and any other receiver on the team probably would’ve run it wrong and gotten called for offensive pass interference, but you need more than that for a third-round pick. 

It looked like ‘Howie SZN’ in August, but it turns out he got fleeced by the team at the top of the division. 

Loser: The entire defense

Vic Fangio was supposed to raise the floor of the Eagles’ defense. It’s still early in the season, but in three of four games the defense has looked just about as pathetic as you could imagine. 

In Weeks 1 and 2, the Eagles matched light personnel with light personnel and they got cooked. In Week 3, the Saints refused to take heavy personnel off the field and the Eagles’ defense matched and thrived.

In Week 4, the Buccaneers said, ‘Well, let’s not do what those psychos in New Orleans did. Let’s do what the smart people in Atlanta and Green Bay did,’ and they played with 11 personnel. The Eagles matched and got demolished. 

It would be cool if the issues were the same as before, but the Buccaneers found yet another way to dismantle this defense. This demolition was different because Baker was playing Hot Potato at an elite level. 

Per Next Gen Stats, he had the second quickest time to throw of his career at 2.22 seconds. The defensive line isn’t getting to him in 2.22 seconds, so that means there needs to be an adjustment with the linebackers and the secondary ... a secondary with Darius Slay, who, after the game, was very willing to brag about his "greatness."

A defensive coordinator with as much experience as Vic Fangio should be able to make the adjustments. If he doesn’t figure it out with these (self-proclaimed) top-tier players, the next three and a half months are going to be brutal, disgusting, and really really not fun.