TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The Tampa Bay Buccaneers suffered their first loss of the season, 25-11, to the Philadelphia Eagles on a night where not many things went right for the Bucs on both sides of the football, as well as special teams.
On Tuesday, Bucs’ head coach Todd Bowles took a step back from his original postgame reaction when sitting down for his “Bucs with Bowles” interview with News Channel 8’s Dan Lucas.
“I left the stadium last night and I thought it was worse than it was,” Bowles said.
Bowles described mistakes as “self-inflicted wounds” but errors that are correctable.
For the second time in three games, the opponent’s main wide receiver finished with dominant numbers. Eagles’ receiver A.J. Brown finished with 131 yards on nine catches.
“I thought it was a YAC, yards after catch thing that bothered me,” Bowles said. “We’ve got to tackle better.”
The Philadelphia run game also enjoyed a big night at the Bucs’ expense, eclipsing 200 yards, 130 of them by running back D’Andre Swift. Despite those numbers, Bowles thinks there will be lessons learned by his defense.
”When I watched the tape, there were two runs that got out there, which is good scheming on their part,” Bowles said. “There were a couple that we had that were self-inflicted. That’s correctable.”
The Bucs offense had difficulty throughout the entire game, mounting just two drives that were longer than six plays. Both of those drives resulted in points.
Quarterback Baker Mayfield threw his first interception of the season, and running back Rachaad White had the ball stripped two plays later. The turnover margin for the game finished 2-2.
“Because we couldn’t run the ball, we couldn’t set up the play-action pass,” Bowles said. “We don’t want them pinning their ears back just the same.”
The Bucs finished the game with just 41 yards rushing.