Why tonight's game is a must-win for Eagles

THEY HAVE to win this game.

Or they're doomed.

Getting sick of hearing and reading that? Get used to it. Whether it's phrased that simply, or expanded with a slew of descriptive words, it is the lot of a playoff hopeful team that began its season with three losses in its first four games, two against division opponents.

A third loss tonight against the Giants, in a division already so banged up and so mediocre that it accentuates the importance of these matchups, would reduce that hope to a prayer, or even despair.

Even with a win, the Eagles would be tied for first with a record that projects to 8-8 over a full season, with games against Carolina, New England, Buffalo and Arizona still in the horizon. And while eight wins might be enough to end up in a tie for the division lead, it's hard to imagine winning a tiebreaker even with a 3-3 record in the division.

Lose tonight, and the questions about just what kind of team they are will return - if they ever really even left. Will DeMarco Murray build on last week and finally get untracked against one of the better run defenses in the league? Or will they again be forced to place responsibility for sustaining drives squarely on a quarterback they had hoped to ease back into a comfort zone following two consecutive knee blowouts?

Ah, but a win tonight against a Giants team that is just a couple of plays away from being undefeated? Then that one-sided victory over a Saints team that proved it was not nearly that bad four days later against Atlanta, gains in significance. Maybe Sam Bradford really did need to shake off the rust. Maybe that offensive line really did just have to jell. Maybe that turnover-producing, shutdown defense we envisioned during the preseason has begun to materialize.

Then hope materializes into . . . well, more hope.

I mean, what are the Eagles, really, as we enter Week 6? A Super Bowl contender? Those preseason contentions seem so far-fetched now. A team capable of making the playoffs?

Their inconsistencies - the picks, drops, penalties, the critical errors at critical times - still imply a fragile team. Lest we forget, the Eagles led just 10-7 at halftime last week, handcuffed by Bradford's two red-zone interceptions. In their loss the week before, Kirk Cousins - who threw a game-ending overtime interception the following week and was picked off twice in the Redskins' 34-20 loss to the Jets Sunday - engineered a game-winning,, 90-yard drive against the Eagles' defense - and particularly a secondary that was the focus of several offseason upgrades.

And what of those and other upgrades? What does the continued fragility, mediocrity - pick your word - that a loss tonight would indicate tell us about the acumen of first-year general manager Chip Kelly? Every football coach, including Kelly, will tell you that success begins in the front, yet everything he did this offseason - from loading up on name-brand running backs, jettisoning Pro Bowl guard Evan Mathis and declining to use any of his draft picks to take an offensive lineman - suggests judgment errors that are both startling and damning.

And the thought that replacing LeSean McCoy with Murray would cut down on negative plays has been comically wrong. With each dropped pass, so too has the notion that Jeremy Maclin was expendable become almost as shortsighted.

Kelly this week quashed rumors of his interest in returning to college, saying he "burned the boats. I'm an NFL guy." He may think so, but given the way his season ended last year and the way it began this year, he probably has to prove more than he has to make that a reality. This may not be his ideal team - he still does not have that mobile quarterback that made his Oregon offenses so lethal - but it is a team that he has chosen, with a few exceptions.

It is a coaching staff he built, too. That's an important point. I love listening to Billy Davis explain things each week probably as much as Chip does. But if his scheme is not the right fit for this defense, that's on the head coach, too.

Yes, the Eagles won a big game against New Orleans last Sunday and won big. But the faults still inhabited the underbelly of that win. The drops, the picks, the needless penalties will assuredly doom them against a Giants team that has turned its season around largely by limiting such mistakes.

Eli Manning is playing at an elite level without much of a running game, a makeshift offensive line and a few favorite targets hobbled (Odell Beckham Jr.) or out of the lineup completely (Victor Cruz). In other words, in spite of a lot of convenient excuses.

The Eagles don't have nearly as many, really. Just the most unnerving one: that this team is nowhere near as good as advertised. And the coach/GM who built it isn't nearly as smart as we thought and hoped he was.

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon