In his second season, Hurts had worked hard to improve his craft as a passer, but some key misses of receivers streaking up and across the seams cost his team opportunities to gain big yardage. Key losses have dogged Tampa Bay’s secondary all season, forcing the defensive coordinator Todd Bowles to try cornerback Richard Sherman as a safety at one point. Worse, Philadelphia could not manage to exploit its opponent’s most glaring weakness. Hurts led all Eagles rushers with 39 yards, and a 34-yard touchdown in garbage time from Boston Scott inflated what had been a 3.8 yards per carry team average prior. The Eagles’ only strength played to a buzz saw performance by the Buccaneers’ defense. Teams know better than to run against Tampa Bay: The Buccaneers saw the fewest rushing attempts of any team this season but still were in the top 10 in tackles for loss, remarkable efficiency for a front seven. Philadelphia led the league in rushing yards per game, but no team in the 2021 regular season threw the ball less often, and the threat of quarterback Jalen Hurts or any of the Eagles’ backs was not enough to manufacture alleys against a defense plugged by the gigantic combination of Vita Vea and Ndamukong Suh on the interior. Brady finished with a sweatless 29-of-37 performance, including two touchdowns. Their soft zone coverage and inability to create much pressure gave the greatest quarterback to ever “take what the defense gives” too much room to dink and dunk his way down the field. The Eagles lack the top-end talent to create big defensive plays, ranking in the bottom 10 in sacks, tackles for loss and passes broken up. Still, the game could not have been teed up any better for the Buccaneers’ offense, stylistically. Tampa Bay learned it wouldn’t have its lead running back, Leonard Fournette, available for Sunday’s game, and was already playing without the receivers Chris Godwin and Antonio Brown, two of Tom Brady’s favorite targets. There was: The Buccaneers can dink their way through as long as the defense holds. There is no larger narrative to wrap around such unbalanced outcomes, and it is tempting to wonder if there was actually anything to be gleaned in this year’s wild-card weekend. The Los Angeles Rams won their third meeting with the division rival Arizona Cardinals, 34-11, in Monday night’s finale to the wild-card round, a disappointing coda that saw the Rams build a 21-0 first-half lead. But in a game where both teams combined for 147 penalty yards - and the Cowboys set a new playoff record for infractions (14) - the late-game sloppiness gave way to what was the wild-card round’s most chaotic ending. Garoppolo was mostly steady and risk-averse, playing within Shanahan’s system and throwing accurate passes on third down. Coach Kyle Shanahan led his team through what felt like an endless loop of two consecutive losses following two consecutive wins, remaining steady in his approach - and his flawed quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, who was just good enough to beat the Cowboys, 23-17, in Dallas on Sunday. Throughout the season, San Francisco never enjoyed the same peaks as Dallas. Mike McCarthy’s play-calling will haunt Dallas’s off-season. That was, until Sunday afternoon, when the Cowboys’ takeaway-or-bust defense yielded to the 49ers’ balanced attack and Dallas had to rely on careful game management to have a chance to complete a late comeback. In the early goings of the wild-card rounds, favored teams won out thanks to reliable plays: the Bengals leaned on Joe Burrow-to-Ja’Marr Chase to open up plays for others, the Bills balanced Josh Allen’s throws with just enough running (from backs and Allen himself) to demolish the Patriots, and the Buccaneers ran up a lead behind replacement rushers before being tempted to take to the air.
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