Game 8 Thoughts

tough loss for the philadelphia eagles today. there was some progress made in the last week and i saw enough good things to think that this team can still be as good as anyone in the flawed nfc, but in order for that to happen they have to correct some critical issues.

- what the hell was that last play? first of all, westbrook, your newly signed "ultimate weapon" is on the sideline. secondly, the skins called timeout to get a look at the formation and the birds came out in the same damn formation. the skins obviously knew what was coming and there was no chance that play could have succeeded without don scrambling for 10 seconds trying to keep the play alive. teams have caught onto what the birds do on offense and defense. that is a scary, scary thought. they have no game planning advantage over teams right now.

- case in point: teams are easily recognizing our screen passes and are stopping them before the blockers even get into position. before the screen on the last drive, the eagles hadn't run a successful screen all game.

- great game by the o-line today. run blocking still could be better, but they were terrific in pass blocking. can't really see too much of the line play, watching the game on TV.

- don got good protection today and looked more mobile than he has all season. i thought he played pretty well except for one bonehead play. i don't blame him for the last play of the game. he was not set up for success there and he couldn't afford to take a sack as it was 4th down. he threw just before getting hit and there was no one open. the 4 receivers flooding the right had like 6 defenders surrounding them. he made a nice throwaway on the birds' second possession of the game when they went max protect and no one got open (a good sign as it shows that he's learning some things)... but... what was that at the end of the half? when a team is struggling like the eagles are, you have to get back to basics. why try to get fancy there? i understand you need to be aggressive, but when the team is struggling, just take the points. that was a stupid play, don.

- too many dropped passes and it seemed like all of them killed drives. westbrook, brown, greg lewis, lamar gordon all dropped catchable passes.

- looked like lito was still having a tough time with his knee. his burst wasn't there and he two missed tackles on the skins second drive alone. his pass interference on patten was ugly.

- mike patterson looks like he's slowing down. he's either dinged up or hitting a wall.

- reggie! reggie! reggie! he could be the best wideout drafted by the birds since fred barnett.

- tackling continues to be a problem. this team used to be such a good tackling team. tonight i counted at least 5 missed tackles - 2 each by lito and michael lewis and 1 by sheldon.

- big red showed a nice commitment to the run game. they still sucked at it, but he did stick with it throughout. they even had a run on third and short! however, i thought the different running styles of the two teams did ended up affecting the outcome of the game. since washington uses more of the power running scheme with lots of plays where linemen pull and build up a head of steam, the eagles defense looked much more worn down by the end of the game (even though the eagles had the edge on time of possession).

- they needed to do more with the big field position edge in the first half.

- darwin walker opened up at end to start the second half and did a nice job of stopping the first washington play of the second half.

- it's bad enough that joe theismann is one of the dumbest analysts around and doesn't provide much insight into the game, but he actively roots for the skins. i guess you can't begrudge that since he played for them. here is an example taken from this game. "look, ladell betts ran right down the middle of the field!" it was a circle route by betts and he could have talked about how brunell hit betts perfectly as he was crossing between two zones, or he could have talked about how the eagles lack of pass pressure allowed brunell to calmly pick them apart. nope. "look! ladell betts ran right down the middle of the field!" good job joe. plus, you can't really respect someone who changed the pronunciation of his name in college from thees-man to thize-man to try to boost his heisman candidacy.

- while the espn monkeys were busy kissing lavar arrington's ass, "did you see arrington get under parry? what a great play!" i was watching josh parry whiff on yet another block. why is he on the team? he sucks. he cannot block, he cannot play!

- trent cole looked much better tonight and looked very much like the player who reminded me of derrick burgess.

- can someone jump on a fumble, please? three fumbles recovered by the skins? any one of them could have made a big difference in this game.

- spach sucks too. he bobbled both balls he caught and he doesn't seem to block too well either.

- clock management is still a problem (please give up play calling andy!). if andy had been looking at the game as a whole instead of having his head in the play chart, he would have realized the birds should have called at least one run once they got into the red zone. even if they had scored, there was way too much time left on the clock.

- bottom line, it's one loss. the team is 4-4 and still has a good shot at the playoffs.