Sunday, December 6, 2009

Southern Hospitality

***

PHI 34
ATL 7


Epic failure. I would have the entire team running wind sprints Monday at 5am. You cannot have letdowns at this time of the year. No shutout = complete disaster.

All I've ever asked for (aside from Megan Fox, chocolate pudding, and beer) is a shutout. I don't need world peace. I don't need a cure for schistosomiasis. I never asked for inner peace or eternal bliss. I'm fine with being morally bankrupt and pleasantly bitter. I do want a shutout. Is that really asking so much? We last had one against the Giants in November of 1996. We shut out John Elway in 1992. Troy Aikman in 1991. Don Majkowski in 1990. Aikman in his rookie year of 1989. We're due.

There we were...seconds left and ATL with a big goose egg on the board. My dream was about to come true. And then Chris Redman reached into my chest. He pulled my heart out, showed it to me, and then put it up for bid on Craigslist (sold for $37). Atlanta scored on the final play of the game. Utter, utter depression set in. The victory was great, but I desperately wanted the shutout. How do I bounce back from an emotional disaster like this? Hard question. It would help if they started making Big John's Baked Beans again. Or maybe I'll find out Stuart Scott has left ESPN to work for some channel I'll never watch. One can only dream.

*********

Big win by the Eagles. We played well, but also benefited from ATL's poor performance. Their defense was really bad. The offense was missing so many key players that it isn't really fair to judge them on the game.

We didn't have our A-game, but still won going away. Big Red has plenty of things he can complain about when reviewing the game. We made more than a few mistakes. You could see him visibly upset with a couple of different players after penalties. That's good. Maybe getting on these guys publicly will make a difference.

I'm shocked that we had a bunch of yards and points, but LeSean McCoy had such a quiet game ( 6 runs for 2 yards). I didn't see that coming. Weaver and Buckley both played well and helped. The passing game was very productive even though Donovan didn't have a great game. He had several poor throws that hurt us. Luckily he made up for most of them.

The defense played well. Chris Redman really struggled and that helped us out. Trent Cole, Darren Howard, and Sheldon Brown all stood out. Macho Harris had a good game as well.

*********

The G-men upset the Cowboys. That moved us into a tie for 1st place in the division. Excellent. We're another step closer to the playoffs, and possibly a division title. We play the Giants on Sunday in a big game.

*********

Sorry for the lack of activity this weekend. Saturday was big game after big game. I was glued to the TV from Noon til after Midnight. The games were so close or compelling that I wasn't able to do any writing. Great day of college football.

I got a visit from my mom today. I watched the game, but wasn't able to spend the day online as I normally do. Time to get started on the Game Review.
__

9 comments:

Myron said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Myron said...

Nice to have a blowout for a change.

Some observations:

- Leonard Weaver looked amazing. The way he catches the ball in the backfield, he almost reminds me of a big Westbrook. Well, ideally, anyway. That would be very cool if he developed into that kind of a player.

- Michael Vick looked surprisingly good. However, for every touchdown he scored and each time the camera panned to McNabb smiling on the sidelines, I got the impression that McNabb was secretly thinking "Ok, one more play, and then I'm telling Andy to get this guy off the field. Can't have people passing touchdown passes whose number isn't #5"

- Let's not get *overly* excited about this win, though. Remember, this is the porous Atlanta defense that gave up copious points to almost every team they have played, and this is an Atlanta defense being quarterbacked by an insurance agent they picked up off the street. Redman is an absolutely terrible quarterback, and a blitz/turnover defense like the Eagle's will make quarterbacks like that look really, really, really bad.

- Tommy, one draft-related question: did you see the Nebraska-Texas game, and if so, are you not completely blown away by Ndamukong Suh? The kid is a beast who requires triple-teams to hold him in check. He does everything. I saw him toss Colt McCoy to the ground like he was a rag-doll with the flick of his wrist. How insanely awesome would it be to have this guy in the Eagles lineup alongside Trent Cole & co?


Anyway, here's to hoping they can play this well against the Giants & the Cowboys soon.

Cliff said...

You're not kidding about Saturday. Best day of college football this season and thus my least productive this semester.

Unknown said...

Leanard Weaver is a manbeast and if we don't lock him up to some kind of deal we are going to miss him. He's big, fast, versatile, can catch the ball, can get the tough yardage... A big man who can run with some power and speed like that is pretty impressive. The one handed catch and run was a hell of a play and when he hits the hole he gets through in a hurry, and no arm tackle is ever going to slow him down.

Brent Celek has had back to back minimal impact games in the passing phase, would have been nice to see him put up a good one after inking that extension.

I really hate our extension policy anyhow. It doesn't work, regardless of how logically sound it might seem. Inevitably one of 2 things seems to happen, either the player underperforms his contract and we end up with dead weight on the roster (Reggie Brown) or they outperform their contract and end up disgruntled because we won't give them a new deal (Sheldon Brown). In theory its a great idea, but in reality players who outperform their contract are going to forget that they sacrificed a big payday for financial security, and its dumb to give players who havent 100% proven themselves (Im looking at you reggie brown) a big deal before you need to. There is simply a disconnect between the idea behind what we do and what actually happens when we do it. I'm not really sure what the reason was for giving Brent a big deal now anyhow, what good can possibly come from extending him so much sooner than we needed to? It's not like we got such a bargain deal either, his contract is comparable to a lot of the top tight ends in the league right now.

I'm almost disappointed the Gmen won today, they're a team I'd hate to see get some late season swagger. We really need to show up next week.

If Green Bay wants to go ahead and lose tommorow night that would be ok by me.

Joe said...

The Giants win is a good thing ONLY if the Eagles win this weekend, otherwise we have a 3 team race at the end instead of a 2 team race.

I agree that we should not get "overly" excited by yesterday's win, but we won big against a team we should have won big over and there is room for improvement. It's not a bad place to be in week 14.

Cliff said...

Agreed. Think about how the Saints are feeling this morning. They struggled against a team they should have handled easily. On one hand, they're probably more confident that they can win from behind (2nd time this season). On the other hand, they have to be worried about what the Redskins have shown the rest of the league.

Think about the Vikings. They lost to a good, but unbalanced team. And they lost bad. Favre looked like 2007 Favre, not 2009 Favre. Kurt Warner looked like a young, spry, Swedish boy while Favre looked like Mr. White Christmas.

With all that said, as an Eagles fan, I'm sitting pretty this morning.

izzylangfan said...

I was rooting for the Giants to beat Dallas and I got my wish. But I was ambivalent and would not have been too disappointed if Dallas somehow won. With the Giants winning we now have a three way competition for the NFC east and the wild card. If Dallas had won the Giants would likely have been out of the race and we could pretty well count on Dallas and Romo to fade in December. At any rate our fate would be in our own control and all we had to do was to beat Dallas on the last day of the season if Dallas hadn't already self destructed by then. Now we have to beat the Giants next week. OK, we should be able to do it and then Dallas will still probably fall apart. But if they don't we are going to have to win two big games instead of one, not to mention knocking off Minnesota and New Orleans to get to the Superbowl.

Cliff said...

@izzy...

Nobody said it would be easy.

Prem Prakash said...

Great post, except I had to look up schistosomiasis.

How's this for an upside to the blown shutout -- the D comes away disappointed. We don't want them congratulating themselves for a job well done, we want them pissed-off and hungry. The Giants game is huge and we want everyone nasty. Shutting out Payton's kid brother is another thing, then maybe Tommy can celebrate.

As for the Cowboys, I can never root for them to win. Even if it meant getting schistosomiasis I'd still root against them.