With the Atlanta Falcons losing, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a chance to pull closer to assuring themselves of a wild-card playoff berth. But before a packed house at Raymond James Stadium Sunday, the Bucs let another close game slip away, losing to the underdog 3-9 Philadelphia Eagles 23-21.<\/p>\n
Thrown under the bus for this loss is the Buccaneer defense, who couldn\u2019t keep the Eagles out of the end zone after the Bucs were up 21-10. Rookie running back, Doug Martin<\/strong>, turned in a great performance, with 28 carries for 128 yards and a score. Wide receivers Vincent Jackson <\/strong>and Mike Williams<\/strong> also turned in great performances. Quarterback Josh Freeman<\/strong> finished the evening 14-of-34 for 189 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Freeman<\/strong> may have gotten off to a slow start Sunday, but it was the defense that let the team down.<\/p>\n The Buccaneer secondary was supposed to be much improved with the additions of draft pick Mark Barron<\/strong>, and the acquisition of Eric Wright<\/strong>. However, it has now been revealed as an Achilles heel for the defense. The Bucs can redeem themselves in their final three games, a visit to New Orleans to face the Saints; a home game against the much improved St. Louis Rams, and their season finale on the road to play the Atlanta Falcons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the Atlanta Falcons losing, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a chance to pull closer to assuring themselves of a wild-card playoff berth. But before a packed house at Raymond James Stadium Sunday, the Bucs let another close game slip away, losing to the underdog 3-9 Philadelphia Eagles 23-21. Thrown under the bus for this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}