What a terrible game
May I pause from my posts about tech and write a little about the Eagles/Cowboys game tonight? Thank you.
There is one word that sums up Philly’s performance tonight – disgraceful. With a first-round bye, a home playoff game and the NFC East crown on the line, the Eagles came out and played more like a 4-11 team than an 11-4 team. Dumb penalties, an out-of-sync offense and the inability to cover Jason Witten all played huge roles.
I’m an Andy Reid fan, don’t get me wrong. However, a lot of his decisions baffled me. First off, Jeremiah Trotter. I love Trot. He’s an Eagle through and through, but he has one major flaw – he’s SLOW. Witten was wide open on multiple plays and #54 was trailing far behind. Trotter is in there to stop the run, yet the Cowboys had a huge night on the ground. We need another LB in there, pronto.
Next, the play calling before the half. The Eagles had a minute and two timeouts to drive down the field and put some much-needed points on the board. They wound up calling some short passing plays, settling for four and five yards when they needed 20-yard chunks. The sense of urgency just wasn’t there, something we seem to say about them constantly this time of year.
Finally, the penalties. The Eagles are giving games away by committing dumb penalties. Sheldon Brown’s pass interference wasn’t even needed – Witten was going to be short of a first down and likely would have been stopped had he caught the ball. There were tons more. False starts. Holding. Roughing the passer. The list goes on. If the Eagles hope to win next week’s game, they need to go in there focused. No dumb mistakes and no killer penalties.
I was fairly confident going into this game. The Eagles usually play lights-out football in big games like this, but they really laid an egg here. A goose egg, as in, zero points. The offense needs to show up next weekend in-sync. The defense needs to become the ferocious group that terrorized opposing quarterbacks in the past. Reid needs to let his players know that penalties are inexcusable. All of these things need to happen if Philly has a shot to get past the Cowboys in the first round.
Okay, back to tech.