THINKS THE EAGLES STOLE ONE
It was a nightmare in the Black Hole. The Eagles were beaten and they were beaten up by the Oakland Raiders, 13-9. They are now 3-2 and they are entirely open to questioning -- about just about everything.
Yes, it was that bad.
It is hard to believe that the simple loss of left tackle Jason Peters could lead to such a terrible tumbling of the dominoes for the Eagles, but that is all of the available evidence at this point. Peter went down with a knee injury in the first quarter and was replaced by King Dunlap. The Eagles were already leaky up front and it became a flood after that. It was fair in the middle of the second quarter to wonder if McNabb was going to finish the game on his feet. By the end, he was sacked six times.
But there were questions everywhere.
David Akers missed two field goals, of 43 and 47 yards.
Jeremiah Trotter, trying to make a comeback at middle linebacker after being out of the game for more than a year, was tortured and abused on an 86-yard touchdown to Raiders tight end Zach Miller. And he was beaten on a 12-yard pass to Gary Russell at the 2-minute warning, a huge play.
McNabb, killed by the pressure, still probably held the ball too long a couple of times -- but, then again, he was desperate to make some kind of play, any kind of play, just to try to get this thing jump-started.
Oh, and his receivers weren’t open much all day.
And the defense gave up a raft of the kind of plays that people worried about all season, plays by the tight end and the running backs, plays in the middle of the field.
Other than that, it was a nice trip.
