The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are set to play the Philadelphia Eagles in the playoffs on Monday. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The Bucs have a 3-2 record against the Eagles in the playoffs, spanning back to the first time the two played each other in 1979. The team has also won its last matchup against Philly in 2021, when Tom Brady and the Bucs beat Jalen Hurts and the Eagles 31-15 in Raymond James Stadium. Now, the two squads are set to play each other in Tampa again, with the Bucs looking to avenge a regular-season loss in Week 3 and the Eagles looking to avenge that Wild Card Weekend loss in 2021.
The most notable of these games happened in the 2002-03 season, when the two teams played each other in the NFC Championship. In the last Eagles game at Veterans Stadium, the Bucs were up on the Eagles 20-10 with around four minutes left. Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb dropped back to pass, but he didn’t see Bucs corner Ronde Barber, who jumped it an completed a pick-six to seal the game and send the Bucs to a Super Bowl they’d go on to win.
The play lives on in NFL lore as the play where Barber “shut down the Vet”, and for no particular reason, you can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCHvKUzTK4k