Why They Won
After watching the Eagles play such a poor game two Sundays ago in Arizona, all a fan wants is to see is his/hers team rebound and play a game that shows all the talent and hope you believed to see in them. To make things harder Philadelphia faced a tough divisional rival in the New York Giants. So would the Eagles play a complete game and realize their potential or would they play like the team that let Larry Fitzgerald beat them in the desert?
Eagles 19 New York Giants 17
The hardest thing about playing a divisional opponent is the fact that they are extremely knowledgeable about your offense and defense. You play teams in your division at least two times every year. This leads to very tight games, and really keeps your wing eating fans on egde. This past Sunday showed that the Eagles and Giants are a lot closer than we all thought. A scoreless first quarter only spoke more to just how close these teams are. One of the points fans and reporters have been begging for is a more balanced attack.The Eagles have the talent to throw short and deep often. That is if the offensive line can protect Mick Vick and if he can be smart and not turnover the ball.
On Sunday the message was received and Philadelphia was able to feature both the pass and run almost equally. After trading punts for a good portion of the first half Mike Vick lead a great drive near the end of the first half and was to give the Eagles a 7-3 lead going into the halftime.
Some people like to call a low scoring a game a “defensive battle” most fans call it “ Fire our coach , because he can’t call good plays to save his life” Or something to that extend. Andy Reid must have felt the pressure because Philadelphia opened the second half with a really good drive down the field that lead to a field goal. You don’t want to be greedy, but when your teams marches down to the opposing teams two yard line a touchdown is much more then adding only three to a lead.In fact our Birds managed to again get down the field, but had to settle for another three-pointer. So the third quarter ended and the Eagles were up 13-10, but as a fan you really wanted the lead to be bigger.
The fourth quarter this season has really been an area of strength for our Eagles, Michael Vick especially has excelled during the fourth quarter. Capitalizing on an Eli Manning interception the Eagles sat at the New York 13, when Vick was sacked on third down, thus forcing Philadelphia to settle for another field goal. An opportunity like that only resulting in three points is a huge momentum killer. We have all seen enough post-game interviews where a team talks about “ not getting it done in the redzone” costing us a win. After the Giants made things interesting by scoring a touchdown to make it 16-17, you feel the game was slipping away. When you don’t put away a team, there confidences grows. The final offensive drive showed that as lame as it sounds, there is just no quit in this dog. ( Sorry it is impossible to not think about the awful things done by our quarterback when I used this term.) And the beauty of it all is that they stayed balanced to get down the field! Running and passing helped Philadelphia make it all the way down to the 2 yard line of the Giants. Here was the moment to put New York away! Seven points at this juncture could provide a deathblow to Eli Mannings team. But you guessed it from the score I posted at the top, the Eagles settle for another field and as fan part of you almost wanted them to lose. Just to serve as a lesson that you absolutely have to score touchdowns to win football games. It fell to the defense to hold onto our two point lead.
I continue to heap praise on the defense and it is much deserved. While they may not do it with bigger numbers like sacks and interceptions. The Philadelphia defense is really good. The stat that impressed me and should impress you is that New York only converted 2 of there 10 third down chances. When you have a defense that is able to get the other team to punt, it provides rest and a shoot of confidence. So as the Giants drove down the field at the end of the game, you just had to hope that the rest had paid off. Despite getting hit with two pass interference calls by the refs.That moved New York into field goal rang, the Giants were hit with a penalty of their forcing them to have to try and convert a 54 yard field goal After attempt one was missed, but was voided by an Eagles timeout( Don’t ask, let’s just say that if Philadelphia would have loss this game you would’ve had to endure a epic” You don’t ice the kicker” rant) Thankfully the second try missed as well and Philadelphia escaped with a win.
As the entire life of Eli Manning will attend to it is better to be lucky than good. Not sure which the Eagles are at this point.
Other having a new punter ( Peace out second year nerd Chas Henry!) Special teams didn’t win or lose the game.
Meanwhile in sexier news fine ass Tom Brady
beat the Bills 52-24
