Bucs complete Eagles collapse with dominant Wildcard Round victory

Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz reacts to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers putting the Philadelphia Eagles out of their misery to set up a Divisional Round matchup with the Detroit Lions.

Video Transcript

JASON FITZ: The season has mercilessly come to an end for the defending-NFC-champion Philadelphia Eagles, by way of an absolute dominating victory for the Buccaneers in Tampa Bay. Remember, Philly started this season 10-1. Jalen Hurts looked like an MVP candidate, and everybody thought everything was gonna be fine. In fact, even going into the playoffs, there were questions about whether or not they could right the ship.

Well, those questions were quickly answered when Philly looked, in this game, the same way they'd looked over the last month of the season. They were one-dimensional, couldn't get anything going in the run game, and they only had one player, DeVonta Smith, that could do anything in the passing game. In fact, Jalen Hurts was so bad-- How bad was he? We even saw a safety at the hands of the Buccaneers in the second half, at a key point when he needed to get rid of the football.

It was total and complete domination by the Buccaneers defensively. Heck, they even stopped the Brotherly Shove. Who thought that could happen? But just when you thought things couldn't get any worse for Philly's offense, their defense said, hold my beer. Tackling was obviously optional in this game, as the Bucs put up 90 yards after the catch in the first quarter alone. Philadelphia absolutely forgot how to tackle throughout the course of this thing, and that's where it really got out of control.

The game was basically never in question, and even through Tampa Bay's occasional mistakes, with some dropped passes, they were clearly the dominant team from the outset. The narrative has changed on Baker Mayfield, and rightfully so, who came into this game and absolutely dominated from the quarterback position.

But the narrative has changed for Philadelphia as well. It's a reminder of how quickly things can go from great to terrible, when you hear some of the thoughts coming from Philly right now about their coaching situation, about their quarterback situation, and about their team as a whole.

The Buccaneers will look to continue their magical playoff run by taking on the Lions, in a game we'll all have eyes on, as we try and see if the Lions can continue magic of their own. But in the meantime, for this moment, let's remember where Baker Mayfield was in popular perception a year ago, where he is right now, and remember the same thing in the opposite direction for Philadelphia.