Eagles-Bucs were a weather game

Weather games are synonymous with professional football.

For whatever reason, when you say that most automatically switch to winter and January in Green Bay or any other cold season over the years with legendary games like the Ice Bowl at Lambeau Field or the Freezer Bowl at Old Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, where the wind is cold, was reported at minus 59 at one point.

The most recent example of a Philadelphia weather game would be Shady McCoy’s dominance of Detroit’s famed Snow Bowl track during the 2013 season.

Few equate extreme heat with “weather games,” but that’s exactly what the Eagles’ 33-16 loss to Tampa Bay was, with temperatures soaring into the mid-90s and a heat index that spiked on the field due to the oppressive humidity reached 110 as a result of Hurricane Helene.

Both teams had to play along, but common sense dictates that whoever spends more time in this climate will be better prepared, just as the Packers have an advantage over the Miami Dolphins coming to Titletown late in the season.

Safety Reed Blankenship, defensive tackle Jalen Carter, center Cam Jurgens and cornerback Darius Slay were among the Eagles players who had issues with the conditions. Jurgens and Carter were sent to the locker room specifically for infusions to treat cramps.

“Gassed is not the right word. We lost a lot of fuel, man,” safety CJ Gardner-Johnson said after the game. “We have to prepare for that in training. We did everything we could, but the heat undid us today.

“Obviously this team came out and played their game. Kudos to Tampa.”

Gardner-Johnson is no stranger to extreme heat. He is a native of the Sunshine State and played his college ball at the University of Florida.

The Bucs are also the perfect team to further explore this idea. Tampa Bay, an expansion team in 1976, didn’t win a game with temperatures below 40 degrees for 26 years and lost 21 in a row before winning at Chicago in Week 17 of the 2002 season.

Unfortunately for Eagles fans, the Bucs pulled off their second straight goal a few weeks later in the 2003 NFC Championship Game in Philadelphia.

Conversely, Tampa handles the heat much better than most northern “weather” cities like Philadelphia.

In August 2022, the Eagles traveled to Miami for a joint training session in the sweltering heat and humidity of South Florida.

The Eagles, known for “winning” joint practices in the Nick Sirianni era, were blitzed that day after Miami emerged from stretching on the Baptist Health Training Complex’s air-conditioned indoor practice field ready to take a Team from Philadelphia just drained of energy out in the sunlight.

There are bigger reasons why the Eagles were defeated in Tampa, starting with the absences of AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith and Lane Johnson, but don’t ignore the weather.

“The heat got to us today,” said Gardner-Johnson. “Cheers to Hurricane Helene. She left the aftereffects. You can’t prepare for this.

“You can take as many infusions as you want and do what you need to do. But it’s one of those games where you have to keep hydrating and persevere.”

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