Almost too disgusted to blog--Or the day the Eagles scored less than the Phillies

I can’t bear spending too much time on this blog entry, but as promised, here’s at least a weekly look-see at some of what went so dreadfully wrong.

I think it’s hard to get too upset with the defense. After all, they only gave up 13 points, but the inconsistency of the run defense was a bit disconcerting and our inability to cover tight ends is a real problem. On the, ultimately game-deciding, TD catch and run from Russell to Zach Miller, Trotter has taken a lot of heat for biting on the play fake and letting Miller get behind him. This criticism is fair, but I blame that TD on Samuels. Asante whiffed worse than Manny Ramsteroidirez on an inside fastball. Samuel had a chance to make the tackle and didn’t even get a piece of Miller. If Samuels even knocks him back a bit, Trotter makes that tackle.

As for the offense, I think you’ve got to put this game on the shoulders of the line. The pass protection was abysmal. That said, let’s give some blame to Mandy Reidinwheg and McNabb. The run-pass balance was unfathomable. It reminded me of the backyard games I played as a little kid in which the offense was allowed one run play for every possession. As for McNabb, well the best you can say is that he was inconsistent, looking a lot like the McNabb of a couple years ago when he came off that ACL injury. In the face of consistently bad protection he still held the ball too long into late in the game, and it does seem like we very rarely beat the blitz with our hot reads the way good teams sometimes do to us. On the whole, McNabb made a few real nice throws, but several were just too far off in important sistuatons. I tend to be a McNabb defender, but he does seem to usually fail when given the chance to muster up the leadership and clutchness that the great ones all seem to have. I’ve long believed you could win a super bowl with McNabb, but it does seem that he rarely puts the team on his back to eke out a close one. Great teams and great leaders always seem to come through at the end even when they’ve been outplayed for most of the game—see Brady, Tom; Manning, Peyton; Roethlisberger, Ben; Rollins, Jimmy!

Still the biggest goats of the game (if these guys gave milk, you could stock Le Bec Fin with chevre for the year) are our o-linemen. The worst of the lot in pass protection was Max Jean-Gilles. I know he looked awesome on the screen to Westbrook, but he got destroyed by the Raider rush again and again. It was embarrassing. MJG was wholly responsible for the second sack of McNabb when MJG was way late responding to a twist as Ellis slid out to engage Justice. He was beat bad again on the first play of the second quarter and on a first half incompletion to Avant, on which McNabb rushed his throw because of the pressure. I’m foreseeing an increase in Stacey Andrews’s reps in the near future. By the second half, I stopped taking notes on the blunders of the offensive line, but everyone really had a poor game. I blame Andy a bit for not giving Dunlap more help, but still Dunlap, Justice, Cole, and of course, MJG all looked atrocious on specific plays during that game. Celek and McCoy also bear some responsibility for the pressure that often overwhelmed McNabb.

All I can say after a game like that is ... Go Phillies!