As a spirited Philadelphia Eagles fan watching last week’s thrashing at the hands of the Dallas Cowboys was sickening. The Eags showed up with no heart or emotion last week and had their butts handed to them on a platter when a victory would have meant an NFC East crown and a first-round bye in the playoffs. They are now faced with the challenge of going back to Dallas this Saturday night and doing it all over again. Will they be able to step up as the underdog and overcome their terrible performance only six days after their week 17 flogging?
Even though I hate the Cowboys with a passion I must credit them for showing up to play last week and making the most of their opportunity. I wouldn’t have been so mad however if the Eagles had also shown up and actually attempted to make it difficult for Dallas to win. Now a lot of analysts have placed the loss on the Eagle’s offensive line which was shuffled around after center Jamal Jackson’s knee injury against the Bronco’s. I certainly agree that the offensive line struggled a bit and contributed to the offense being out of sync but by no means was that the only reason they played so poorly. My biggest problem was with defensive coordinator Sean McDermott’s refusal to blitz in order to pressure QB Tony Romo. The Eagle’s only blitzed 5 times in the first half and not much more in the second half. This is a departure from the first matchup where they brought pressure 59% of the time and kept Dallas’ offensive largely in check until a blown coverage resulted in the deciding score to Miles Austin. The Eagles are small on their defensive line and have yet to prove that they are anything more than mediocre when they play a base defense. Dallas proved that by shredding them on every drive they had during the first half. The only time I saw them bring pressure on consecutive plays was during the Cowboys’ first drive of the second half, which also resulted in a quick 3 and out. Philly will have to find new ways to bring pressure and sell-out a little bit if they want to force Romo into making his characteristic mistakes. It’s one thing for a team to out execute you if they can pick up your blitz and find the open man but to let them gain 5 to 10 yards on every play while you sit in a base 4-3 is unacceptable. I don’t know what the Eagles’ coaching staff thought they had on defensive but the lack of pressure and lack of adjustments really bothered me.
I’ve seen the Eagles struggle on offense like they did last week a number of times before when they just get out of sync (just look at this season’s loss to the Raiders). Part of that was definitely the offensive line’s fault but not all. It seemed that every time they finally did something well there would be a bad penalty or a dropped pass or a missed block that prevented them from stringing everything together. I’ve seen this happen where QB Donovan McNabb will make a perfect throw only to have it dropped and then the next play get happy-feet and miss a wide-open receiver.
I can go on and on about what the Eagles need to fix in they want to win on Saturday but all that really matters is the attitude they bring to the game. I hope last week hurt this team’s pride and they go out there with something to prove. I am firm believer in the theory that teams can exceed expectations when no one believes in them and the Eagles are the one wildcard team that hasn’t inspired a lot of faith lately. This team needs to play mistake-free football and show us that they won’t roll over to their rivals. These are the flipping Dallas Cowboys they are playing and to have a potential Super Bowl run extinguished at the hands of Tony Romo and company will not sit well with the unforgiving Philadelphia fan base.
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