Roob's Instant Observations after nail-biting Eagles win in Tampa

The Eagles held on Sunday against the Buccaneers with a 31-25 victory to improve to 4-0 on the season.

By Reuben Frank • Published September 28, 2025

It shouldn’t come down to the final 53 seconds when you had a seemingly comfortable 18-point lead in the third quarter, but it did and as they always do, the Eagles made a play and they won a game, 31-25, over the Bucs in Tampa.

This time it was Parry Nickerson, but it’s somebody different every week. Someone knocks a ball down. Someone gets a stop. Someone makes a crazy catch. Someone forces a turnover. Someone blocks a field goal.

This Eagles team has an incredible knack of winning games despite really making things tough on themselves, and that was sure the case in Tampa on Sunday.

They needed a 4th-down stop with 53 seconds left and the Bucs on the Eagles’ 37 to clinch this one, but they found a way once again and they’re now 4-0 with four nail-biter wins and 20-1 in their last 21 games with back-to-back 10-game winning streaks separated by a loss in Washington.

They just win.

1. We’re going to start out here with Parry Nickerson because you need to know about him. Parry Nickerson is a 30-year-old slot cornerback who until Sunday in Tampa hadn’t played in an NFL game since Oct. 22, 2023, when he was with the Dolphins and played in a loss to the Eagles at the Linc. That was two years ago and this guy has been grinding ever since, trying to find a job, trying to find a team, trying to prove to someone that he can play football. This is a guy who’s been released 15 times. Think about that. Fifteen times he got a phone call saying his team didn’t want him. Fifteen times he had to try to find a new team. Fifteen times he wondered about his future. Most recently last month, when the Eagles cut him. But he came back on the practice squad, made his way to the 53-man roster on Wednesday, found himself on the field on the biggest play of the game, the Bucs’ 4th-and-9 at the Eagles’ 37-yard-line. The Eagles led 31-23 after leading 24-6 early in the second half, but the Bucs had all the momentum. Baker Mayfield threw a short pass to tight end Cade Otton, and Nickerson made a perfect form tackle on him, effectively ending the game. This team has a different hero every week, and Nickerson was about as improbable as any of them. This is the kind of story you have to love.

2. We’re really seeing how the inability of the running game to get anything going is hampering the offense. You go into the third quarter up 24-6 and, yeah, in the past — with Miles Sanders, with D’Andre Swift and obviously last year with Saquon Barkley — you used the passing game to build the lead, keep the clock moving, wear down the defense and really take command of the game. But the running game is giving the Eagles nothing right now and it was actually worse in Tampa than it has been. Now that’s a very good defensive front, and they came into Week 4 fifth in the NFL in run defense. But it wasn’t that long ago that it didn’t matter who the Eagles were trying to run against. Without a running game, the Eagles kept trying to move the sticks in the second half throwing the ball, but if Todd Bowles knows you can’t run and you have to throw, he’s just going to keep blitzing. Which is what happened. And one of the reasons the Eagles didn’t complete a pass after halftime. Barkley finished 19-for-43, and he’s now 77-for-237 this year, which is a 3.1 average. The Eagles have to figure this out.

3. Three kicks, three blocks. That’s insane. After finishing last week with blocked field goals on the Rams’ last two drives, they began this game with a blocked punt. They blocked three consecutive kicks that they faced, returning the last two for touchdowns. The Eagles had 12 blocked punt or field goal touchdown returns in franchise history until last week. Now they have two in a row, Jordan Davis returning his own blocked field goal last week and Sydney Brown returning a punt blocked by Cam Latu in the first quarter Sunday. Six plays apart? Has any team ever blocked three straight kicks they’ve faced? Has any team ever scored two blocked kick touchdowns without running an offensive play in between? Maybe? The NFL has been around for 106 years. But come on, there is no way that’s ever happened and I wish I could look it up tonight but it would take days. Eagles special teams coach Michael Clay deserves so much credit for turning kick blocking into a real weapon. He’s really developed into an elite special teams coach, and blocks can really change games, as we’ve seen two weeks in a row now. Without that blocked punt TD, the Eagles probably lose Sunday.

4. Shane Steichen used to love running the same play over and over if it was working until the other team figured out how to stop it. That’s why I loved running that little under-hand flip to Dallas Goedert – the old Donovan McNabb-Brian Westbrook shovel pass – twice in the red zone for touchdowns. It worked the first time? Run it again! And it worked the second time. Too many coaches out-smart themselves. If a play works, hey, they’ll be expecting that so let’s do something completely different. No, keep running it and make them stop it. This was only Goedert’s second career two-touchdown game, and he’s never been a guy to catch a ton of touchdowns – just 25 coming into the game in eight seasons. In fact, he had as many TDs Sunday in Tampa as he had all last year. But he’s such a weapon in the red zone with his size, physicality, toughness and ball security down at the goal-line.

5. We need to talk about the second half. Sorry. We just do. Because yikes. It almost cost the Eagles. First half: Outscored the Bucs 201-99 and outscored them 24-6. Jalen Hurts was 15-for-16 for 130 yards and two TDs and the Eagles averaged 7.2 yards per play and had three first downs. Second half? First of all, I’m not going to include the negative-34 rushing yards credited to punter Braden Mann on the game-ending safety. But even without that play, they were outscored 19-7 and outgained 277-33 after halftime. Hurts was 0-for-8 in the second half, Barkley was 12-for-25 and the Eagles averaged 1.1 yard per play. And that’s without the negative-34 yard intentional safety. I really liked the way Kevin Patullo called plays before halftime, but all the positives we saw before halftime disappeared. The o-line struggled to protect. Play calling was predictable and mundane, Hurts made some bad reads and throws and the running game was even worse than before halftime. They had eight drives and that’s six punts, an intentional safety by the punter and a touchdown after a Bucs turnover at the Eagles’ 25. Five 3-and-outs in a half? Look, this is a very good football team they just played in a building where they never win with a terrific defense. So you’re thrilled to get outta there with a win. But they need to find a way to play 60 minutes and they haven’t come close to doing that yet.

6. This wasn’t a perfect performance by the defense by any means. They allowed close to 400 yards, they gave up two 70-yard touchdown passes – only the third time in the last 60 years that’s happened – and they allowed over 100 rushing yards again. Their 2nd-half tackling was terrible. But one thing about this group. They have a knack for making huge plays at clutch moments. The Bucs were rolling in the second half, but the Eagles got four huge stops that made up for all the big plays and all the yards they allowed. The Bucs had a 4th-and-3 on the Eagles’ 33 on their first drive of the third quarter and Kelee Ringo forced an incomplete pass to Sterling Shepard, later in the third quarter Jalyx Hunt and Jihaad Campbell forced a Bucky Irving fumble deep in Bucs territory to set up the Eagles’ only 2nd-half touchdown and in the fourth quarter Campbell picked off Mayfield in the end zone and then on the Bucs’ final drive Nickerson had that 4th-down stop on Otton. That’s four huge stops, one by a backup corner, two by a rookie and one by a guy who hadn’t played in an NFL regular-season game in two years. That’s the story of this defense. They got gashed at times, but whenever they needed a big play, they got it.

7. It was an odd game for Hurts, but we should point out that with 24 passes Sunday, Hurts has now thrown 241 consecutive regular-season passes without an interception. He broke the franchise record of 233 set by Nick Foles in 2013. Hurts has now gone 10 straight starts without an interception, tied for the 3rd-longest streak in NFL history. Justin Herbert had an 11-game streak last year and Tom Brady had an 11-game streak over the 2010 and 2011 seasons. Jared Goff in 2022 and 2023 and Derek Carr in 2018 also had 10-game streaks. Since throwing four interceptions in the Eagles’ first three games last year, Hurts has thrown 360 passes over 16 regular-season games with just one interception. He’s the first quarterback in NFL history to throw at least 300 passes over a 16-game span with one or fewer interceptions.

8. I just think winning a game vs. the Bucs – no matter what it looks – is huge for this team and huge for Nick Sirianni. The Bucs have tortured the Eagles lately, ending their season with ugly wild-card losses in 2021 and 2023 along with that blowout win at Raymond James Stadium this week last year. Sirianni has lost three playoff games, two to Todd Bowles and the Bucs. He’s lost 17 games since October 2021, three to the Bucs. These two teams could play again in the postseason and to get past the mental block of losing to this team all the time – and getting blown out all the time is really big. I think this was a roadblock the Eagles had to get past. No matter what.

9. Important to remember that whatever it’s looked like – and it’s looked pretty wonky at times – the Eagles just opened a season with a win over their biggest division rival, a win over the defending AFC champions, a win over a perennial playoff team that was unbeaten and a win over another perennial playoff team that they never beat that was also unbeaten. To navigate this brutal first month of the season and emerge 4-0 is incredible. The Eagles have this giant bull’s-eye on their back after winning the Super Bowl and they’re still unbeaten. There’s a lot to fix, but just to find their way to 4-0 is remarkable.

10. This football team has been winning so consistently and so routinely it’s easy to just take it for granted, but, man, what they’re doing is virtually unprecedented in NFL history. Ten wins in a row, then a loss to Washington (with Kenny Pickett playing most of the game at quarterback), then 10 more wins in a row. The only other team in NFL history to go 20-1 over a 21-game stretch is the Patriots, who were 21-0 from Week 5 of 2003 through Week 7 of 2024. The Eagles never won 10 straight games before Nick Sirianni became their coach. Now they’ve done it twice in 12 months. They just don’t lose, and they still haven’t played a complete game this year and they’re sitting here 4-0. With the 49ers, Colts,  Chargers and Bucs all losing Sunday , the Eagles are the only remaining undefeated team in the NFC and one of only two remaining 4-0 teams, along with Sean McDermott’s Bills. Just imagine what this team is going to look like when they play a complete game.

11. BONUS OBSERVATION: Fifteen-yard taunting penalties are the dumbest thing the NFL has ever come up with.

https://www.nbcsportsphiladelphia.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/roobs-instant-observations-nfl-week-4-buccaneers/686681/

10 hours ago, time2rock said:

Fifteen-yard taunting penalties are the dumbest thing the NFL has ever come up with.

Amen, don’t step over someone cause you’ll get flagged. No Fun League.