Eagles: Heartbreaker at Home

A slow start put the Eagles in a hole on Sunday night, but they showed heart and climbed out … only to fall short as the New York offense plowed its way down the field in the second half. I said that the Eagles could win this game but they would have to play their best; and they did just that right up til the fourth quarter when bad play calling, time management and two stupid challenges lost the game for them. Sound Familiar? The Giants ran for 219 yards, averaging 4.9 yards per carry. The Eagles ran for 106 yards, but Brian Westbrook accounted for just 26 yards on 13 carries, and failed twice to convert late in the game, first on a third-and-3 play when he ran to the right edge of the formation and then when he was stoned on a fourth-and-1 run to the right side. Short-yardage situations have been a problem for the Eagles all season, and they were again an issue late in a game that the Eagles were, one touchdown away from winning. The Eagles were dominated at the line of scrimmage as New York doubled the time of possession, but there the Eagles were, down five points, with the ball and a first down at their 36-yard line with 2 minutes, 35 seconds to play. I am not questioning Andy Reid as head coach I am just saying that whether it was him or Marty that called those two running plays at the end of the game they need to sit down and revaluate their playcalling as it applies to this team. Why can't the Eagles run the ball consistently? Poor play up front? No true fullback? Running backs who aren't big enough? Some of all of the above, and then some? The Eagles went up against the best on Sunday night, no doubt about it, and the Giants did the things we knew the Eagles might have trouble with to drop Philadelphia to 5-4 and make the margin for error around here almost nothing in the final seven weeks of this season.

Where to begin here? The second half is a good place to start, because after the Eagles took the opening kickoff of the third quarter and moved brilliantly into scoring position and then scored on a McNabb fade pass to Hank Baskett to lead 24-20, the Giants took over. Just as it was in the first half after the Eagles took a 7-0 lead, New York pushed the Eagles all around at the line of scrimmage and drove 69 yards on 13 plays to grab back the lead on a punishing drive aided by a questionable reversal of an apparent illegal forward pass ( Eli Manning was initially ruled to have stepped over the line of scrimmage on a completion to tight end Kevin Boss, and somehow the play was overturned) and while we can bellow and scream about the officials on that one, the fact is the Giants dominated the line of scrimmage.

The offense? Other than a conversion after an early turnover and some success late in the first half and early in the second half, not much. McNabb started slowly again and never really heated up on a chilly night. The running game was a bust. The Eagles converted just 3 of 11 third downs. That the Eagles were even in the game in the fourth quarter was a mild surprise after the way it went in the first quarter. The suggestion here isn't to totally abandon the running game. The Eagles must improve in that phase of their offense, specifically the short-yardage attack. But the offense is lacking a bread-and-butter personality, and now is the time to make the passing game, already a focus through nine games, even more of a go-to call. It is time, maybe, to open up and offense that is already pretty darn open by NFL standards. The Eagles throw the ball well. They pass protect well. They create good matchups with their X's and O's and they have enough weapons to put the ball in the end zone. The offense is scoring points this season. What it isn't doing is converting short-yardage plays at crucial times and while the negative emphasis has been on the short yardage, the strength of the offense has been putting points on the scoreboard via the passing game. So throw it. Don't hold back. Balance is not in the equation. The Eagles need to get some leads and then go out and work on the running game as they work the clock.

The Eagles knew they had to be physical in every phase of the game, and they really gave it everything they had. But the defensive front was not much of a match for a Giants offense that controlled the football for 39:10. At some point, the Eagles are going to have to step up against the run. They have tried just about every tweak to the scheme and did so on Sunday night when the defense was overpowered by the Giants. The Eagles simply need players to step up and play better. They need better technique. They must control the gaps better and tackle better and play more physical football. The Eagles have invested a whole lot in their front seven. They have first-round draft picks in Mike Patterson and Brodrick Bunkley at tackle, a couple of second-round picks up there with Trevor Laws and Victor Abiamiri and some high-salaried talents like Darren Howard and Trent Cole and even Juqua Parker. The linebackers are young and talented and physical. It has a chance to come around for this defense, and in games against Cincinnati and Baltimore and then Arizona ( teams that have not run the ball nearly as effectively as Washington and New York) the Eagles have to work things out. They have to get some answers up front. New York's three-headed monster of a running game accounted for 217 yards, helping the Giants convert 7 of 15 third downs and effectively keeping McNabb off the field. Manning was only OK, but he did go to Eagles-killer Plaxico Burress for an early touchdown and then to Boss a half-dozen times to continue Philadelphia's defensive problems against tight ends.

In the end, the loss was just too much Giants and not enough, well, not enough of a lot of things. Mostly, though, it was not enough success at the line of scrimmage, a loss that dropped the Eagles to 5-4 and puts them three games behind New York in the NFC East with seven games to play. Oh, they'll come back. I have faith in that. I think the Eagles are going to be in the thick of things in December, but they have to find some way to win close games, something they really haven't done for a couple of seasons. It was a tough loss and it is a bitter feeling. The Eagles lost at the line of scrimmage, and they have other questions to answer, with not much time or margin for error to consider.