Staff Blog
About Last Night – September 29th
The Eagles were unable to capitalize on four consecutive
plays inside the Bears’ five to secure the win, which had everybody in Philadelphia ready to
burn Big Red at the stake and pull a Garrett Reid to numb the pain. Well,
everybody except me. You know why the
Birds couldn’t get in the endzone there? It’s because their best option is running
their pro bowl tailback right over the back of their pro bowl right guard. When neither of them are playing, that play
doesn’t work. And I don’t care how
unpopular an opinion this is: Andy Reid was right not to risk the health of his
pro bowl quarterback running a sneak in the forth game of the season. The Eagles are really good – they played
poorly in part because it was a trap game, in part because the field was
miserable (a point no one is talking about … there were like half a dozen slips
in the game, how do they not point that out after the DeSean muff?), and in
part because arguably their two best offensive players weren’t on the field. They have the Redskins next week then a cake
walk after the break. The world moves
forward … I promise.
The Game: The Birds lost 24-20. It was an ugly, sloppy game on both sides. The defense continued to swarm, but getting
picked apart by Kyle Orton for an entire half is never good for confidence.
The Goat: Quintin Mikell got abused on the Bears’
second TD pass of the game, David Akers missed two field goals, and DeSean
Jackson continued to be a fantastically talented rookie.
The Race: The Birds fell to 2-2, good for last in the
stacked NFC East.
Other Notes:
- Jon Runyon committed his penalty since 2006
- Kyle Orton was 3-10 for just 25 yards in the second half
- The Eagles went 2-13 on third down
- Bears’ rookie Matt Forte carried the ball 19 times for just
43 yards. - Through four games, opposing kickers are six-for-six against
the Birds. Two of those kicks were from more than 50 yards, and four were from
more than 45 yards.
 |
| Lou Marson |
PHILLIES
The rest of that 40 man roster played. It was fantastic.
The Game: 8-3 in a game that didn’t matter for the standings.
Good times.
The Hero: Lou Marson not only went deep for his first
major league home run, but then gave himself fake high-fives when he got the
customary first-homerun-freezeout from all his teammates.
The Race: 92-70 gets the Phils into the promised land
for the second year in a row, this time with one to spare.
Other Notes …
- Les Walrond got his first major league victory. After the game he got the entire team to sign
his scorecard. - So Taguchi went 3-5 while Greg Golson went 0-4 with three
Ks. One of them will presumably get the
last playoff roster spot. - Jayson Werth pinch hit just so he could have one more chance
to get a hit, steal a base, and end up a 20-20 guy. He did just that. - Ryan Howard pinch hit just to preserve his consecutive games
played streak. He got a hit and scored
on a Taguchi triple
While I respect your right to offer an opinion, I think this particular one is dead wrong. Andy Reid called 45 pass plays last night, and you’re gonna tell me that he’s concerned about his quarterback taking hits? Really? Not to mention that he’s not gonna be taking a big hit on a quarterback sneak. At worst, he’ll have someone trying to poke his eyes out, but can you honestly come up with an instance in our lifetime that a QB has been injured on a QB sneak? Because i will happily give you about 6,000 examples of QBs being injured when they drop back to pass. And we gave mcnabb 45 chances to get hurt doing that last night.
You’re right about the other stuff: it killed us not having Westbrook, DeSean was downright awful after the 1st quarter, ditto for Akers, and our defense — while dominating for 20 minutes — still gave up 24 points to the BEARS and couldn’t get off the field on the biggest 3rd down of the game. But with that said, we probably still win the game if we sneak it at the end. And before we make the “it’s early” argument, remember that the NFC East is REALLY good, and everyone’s basically playing the same easy schedule. When 10-6 could well put you in last place, every game is an important one.
alright, Andy Reid is a lying if he doesn’t want his qb hurt – fair point. That said, injuries are still the only thing that really worries me right now.
However, if the Birds drop the Skins game next week I may be singing a different tune.