Buccaneers reach two franchise firsts in win over Eagles
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had quite the evening on Monday night in their 32-9 throttling of the Philadelphia Eagles in their Wild Card round matchup. Baker Mayfield completed 22 of 36 attempts for 337 yards with 3 touchdowns. The Buccaneer defense was relentless and smothering, sacking Eagles QB Jalen Hurts 4 times and holding Philadelphia […]
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had quite the evening on Monday night in their 32-9 throttling of the Philadelphia Eagles in their Wild Card round matchup.
Baker Mayfield completed 22 of 36 attempts for 337 yards with 3 touchdowns. The Buccaneer defense was relentless and smothering, sacking Eagles QB Jalen Hurts 4 times and holding Philadelphia to less than 300 total yards of offense.
It was truly a victory in all three phases as the Bucs took control of the game from the start and never looked back. In fact, for two of those phases, it was a night of franchise firsts.
Baker Mayfield became the first Tampa Bay quarterback to reach 300+ passing yards and 3 passing touchdowns in a postseason game, according to the ESPN broadcast. The defense's third quarter safety on Hurts was also the first safety in the postseason in franchise history.
Mayfield's numbers are the second time in the last four weeks that he's reached an impressive passing record of some type. On December 17 in the Buccaneers' 34-20 win, Mayfield became the first visiting quarterback to ever go into Lambeau Field and post a perfect passer rating of 158.3.
Now he's staked a claim to a mark no Buccaneer quarterback has ever done in the postseason. To be clear, Tom Brady's performance in the 2020 playoffs was as good as anything the Buccaneers could have dreamed of. He threw for 381 and 2 touchdowns against Washington. He threw three touchdowns in the Bucs' wins over the Packers and the Chiefs to claim Super Bowl LV. But when it comes to breaking the 300-yard passing mark with 3 touchdowns, Mayfield now stands alone.
Defensively, there might not be a more fitting game to get the franchise's first postseason safety, as the pass rush was relentless and harassed Hurts all game. Anthony Nelson was able to chase Hurts back into the end zone and force him to throw the ball into the ground and draw the grounding call for the safety and an 18-9 lead with 2:16 left in the third quarter.
For the game, the Bucs accumulated four sacks, but they also forced several quick throws that either resulted in incompletions or ended up with catches short of the sticks.
The Buccaneers' win over the Eagles will stick in fans' memories for a long time. And it will stick in the Buccaneers' record books for even longer.
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