Philly Sports Chat

Tim Heitman/US Presswire

To sum up last night’s Eagles’ game in one word, I would have to use ‘pathetic’. In all aspects of the game they looked bad. Going into the game, my confidence in this team was as high as it could be. They were winners of 6 straight and the buzz around the league was that they could be the favorites to take the NFC with their high scoring, explosive offense.

After seeing them get shutout 24-0 to the Cowboys in the biggest game of their season so far, my confidence in them is at rock bottom. They had so much more to play for this Sunday than the Cowboys did. By game time Dallas already knew they couldn’t get a first round bye and reports say they actually would have preferred a playoff match up besides the Eagles in round one. The Eagles, on the other hand, controlled their own destiny and a win would have gotten them a first round bye and a round two game at the Linc. I guess that’s not enough to inspire a team these days.

From the gates, the Cowboys looked more motivated to win. They had a nice game plan, ran the ball well and were finding open receivers all over the field. On top of that, for the entire first half Romo was not getting pressured at all. He had all the time in the world to hit an open guy and the Eagles’ defense couldn’t stop anything. Trotter covering Witten was a huge mismatch and the Eagles only forced them to punt a few times in the entire game.

Offensively, the Eagles continued their struggles. They only had the ball for just over 19 minutes and had only 1 redzone trip which ended in no points. There were no holes to run through and when McNabb wasn’t missing the receivers, the balls were going right through their hands. They only had 8 drawn up rushing plays compared to 29 by the Cowboys.

Call me crazy though but I think this Saturday’s game will be a different story. The Cowboys played the best game they could have played against the Eagles and now the Birds have a full week to watch tape of what when horribly wrong and correct it. If yesterday’s game wasn’t enough to inspire this team, a prime-time playoff matchup will be.

I would look for a few key things to be different this game. On the defensive side of the ball, they will be more resistant to the passing game and put A LOT more pressure on Romo. I still think the Cowboys will be able to run the ball on them simply because of the depleted linebacking corps. But the passing defense and QB pressure will be much improved. Offensively, they will go back to the Eagles of the six game winning streak. They looked dead out there but it wasn’t fully because the Cowboys were playing great defense. The Birds’ receivers had plenty of open looks and there were deep plays downfield that were missed.

This game was extremely embarrassing and we have to wait until Saturday night to get this taste out of our mouths but look for the Eagles to come more prepared to play. Do you agree or do I have a false sense of hope?

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