Some Fight Left
Before the game, the Iggles Blog wondered if this year's Eagles team was most like Jason of Friday the 13th, only instead of finding more and more creative ways of killing other people, he kept killing himself. Which made me think of Harold setting himself on fire or performing some ritual Japanese suicide in Harold & Maude.
So what do we make of last night?
And don't start with Rocky theme song.
As Enrico notes, Sly Stallone isn't the good luck charm that 's going to save the season - a 6-and-6 season that seems to have some life left in it this morning. The last time he and Sly were at the same game at the Linc, Tampa Bay took the Birds down.
From Stallone's turn in an Eagles jacket, to the 70,000-member chorus on the "Lido Shuffle," the fans "loved every minute of it," Enrico reported on his Fan House blog about 1:30 this morning, presumably home after a night of yelling, taking notes and snapping photos of frigid cheerleaders.
From as far as away as Japan, you could see the fight in the team. Micc's Rants & Raves:
Finally the D makes some plays to win!!! It was a gritty, none-to-pretty display of downright Philadelphia DETERMINATION that the Eagles showed the rest of the league...Did they give up too many plays? Sure.. Did they infuriatingly keep trying play-action before establishing the run? You bet (Andy's paw-prints are all over a gameplan that didn't figure out to RUN on 1st down until our 5th series of the game). But you know what I saw? LIFE...this team did not quit...even when Carolina kept counter-punching, KEPT retaking the lead, this team kept its composure. Maybe it was the presence of Sylvester Stallone (yeah that's right Rocky himself, promoting his new Rocky 6 movie) but whatever it was, the Birds found their balls (pardon my french) and ground out a win.
Bleeding Green was delighted to see grit on his birthday:
In the end we always want wins, but I really think more than anything Eagles fans want to see pride and effort. We didn't feel like like we were given that the last few weeks. This is the pride, the effort, and fire we've been begging the team to show us the past few weeks. Great performances from Stallworth, Trotter, Westbrook, and of course LITO!
It's not all sweetness and light. Johnny Goodtimes is still seething over the way he felt fans treated QB Jeff Garcia:
When Jeff Garcia, who threw for 312 yards, 3 TDs and no interceptions, went down after a couple of hard hits in the 3rd quarter, Eagle fans cheered. Yep, there were our fans, in front of a national audience, cheering an injury to their own player. I mean, at least Michael Irvin played for the other team! The neanderthals then booed when Garcia stayed in the game. Why? Because they think AJ Feeley is the 2nd coming of Joe Montana.
But, as the Eagle Report sums up, visions still fresh of Keyshawn Johnson's futile plea for flag on the game-deciding play:
As Eagles fans, we haven't felt this good about a game since the win over Dallas back in October, and this game was made all the more sweeter by getting to see "Meshawn" toss his helmet in frustration at the end. Not only did this win bring the Eagles back to .500, but it could also come back to haunt the Panthers come New Year's; with both teams at 6-6, it is quite possible that these two teams will be battling for a wild card spot at the season's end, and this head-to-head win puts the tiebreaker in Philadelphia's favor. Overall, this game had its scary moments, but we saw some great football played by both sides and can hold our heads high.
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Two things I noted while reading before the game.... See through the negative words - these were written while the team was barely breathing.
Dils mused:
This Eagles team is the most depressing of all. So close to the mountain top for so long, but never quite able to get to the only place they really wanted to go. And now, their fingertips, which had been hanging desperately to the edge for a while, slipped off, leading to a rapid descent that promises a long fall and no quick way back up toward the top. This team has always relied on a vicious defense to apply pressure on quarterbacks and keep them in ball games. This defense is now slow and lacks any teeth. It is the opposite of intimidating. The Indianapolis Colts became the third team in the last four games to rush for 200 yards against this defense. The personnel is either old and declining (Jeremiah Trotter, Brian Dawkins), or simply inadequate (defensive line, remaining linebackers). The Eagles just gave Mike Patterson a pile of money to stay with the club for eternity and he has basically been a non factor. But at least he has made all the team flights, which is more than we can say for Broderick Bunkly, their other first round defensive lineman selected in consecutive years.
One more graf:
At the end of the day, Jim Johnson and Andy Reid have lost this team. They are not able to punch the buttons to get the most out of this team. It is certainly time for a new defensive coordinator, and probably a new head coach as well. The problem is that the General Manager is the same guy as the head coach, and not likely to make a move on himself. Which brings us to the next problem. The General Manager has done a horrible job of analyzing talent. His draft this year was a complete bust. His draft last year was not much better. And he seems to let the wrong guys get away from this team (has anyone noticed that Derrick Burgess has led the league in sacks since he left the Eagles two seasons ago?
And now, Scrapple's beef, (in ee cummings lower casing):
jim johnson has had a nice run as the eagles d-coordinator. his defenses have consistently finished among the best in the league in pass defense and scoring defense, and they have been exciting and aggressive. however, for me, there has always been one critical factor about JJ defenses that i don't like -- they cannot beat good quarterbacks. JJ sells out to put pressure on the QB, and in general, he has had good success with it because there aren't that many good QBs in the league (at least ones that can handle pressure anyway)... but good QBs carve his defense up. badly.
the problem i see is that JJ plays defense like one of those super aggressive internet poker players, always going all-in and putting pressure on the other guy. the problem with that strategy is that it works really well against players who aren't as good as you but it gets you in trouble against players who are better than you. when you're facing an opponent who doesn't lose his head every time you put the pressure on them, they have a good chance of getting you in the long run. similarly, JJ's defenses do great against bad QBs, but tend to struggle against QBs who aren't flustered by the blitz.
Note the thick-as-chili paragraphs, the deliberately advanced arguments. Forget that they were written during the several weeks when it looked as if someone had stuck a fork in the season. For a long while we've noted here that football bloggers tend to snort and rut compared to the Phloggers, those baseball writers of cyberspace who tend to wax more lyrically about their diamond of a game.
Has the Eagles blogosphere arrived?
Who takes notes at a football game? Steve sounds like a chronic whiner too me.
I remember talking about this with Daniel in the past. It's the nature of blogging about football & baseball that makes the difference between the two types of bloggers. With football you have a week to stew about every game. IMO, your highs are higher and your lows are lower. If the Phils get bombed 15-0 one night, they can always get a win the next night. So how down can you really be? It's literally if the Phillies only won or lost in 6 game streaks. I'm really just as big a Phils fan as I am a Birds fans and I know that's why I seem to get more down and up about the Eagles. It doesn't bother me at all that some Eagles bloggers are so reactionary and up and down. That's Eagles fans! They boo a player one minute and cheer him the next. The fact that the Eagles blogoshpere reflects that is a positive.
Pick up Duce............NOW! Outside of Westbrook, he's better than anyone else they have back there.
Correction, Duce WAS better 3 YEARS AGO than anything they have now. He's just about completely useless at this point. Injured and out of shape.
Let's just review some rushing stats through 12 games for those ERBOTW (Eagles Running Backs Other Than Westbrook)
Rushing
Player G RUSH YDS TDS Buckhalter, Correll 12 65 254 0
Moats, Ryan 4 11 47 0
Tapeh, Thomas 10 5 4 0
Mahe, Reno 2 4 8 0
Lets keep Buckhalter in the mix. The other three guys have run 20 times for 59 yards and 0 touchdowns. I think that Duce Staley today - if, in fact , is still injured, out of shape and in a snoring coma could do better rushing the football in the 4 remaining games than Moats, Tapeh and Mahe have done in the previous 12 games combined.
How do you know the cheerleaders are frigid?
they were, at least, very cold.