NFL

Make up Your Mind, Philly: Are You a Good Team or Not?

Posted Dec 07, 2008 2:43PM By Chris Burke (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Eagles, Giants

Print
Text Size A A A
I reached a conclusion during the first half of today's Philadelphia-New York game: When Brian Westbrook plays, Donovan McNabb takes care of the ball and the Eagles defense shows up, then Philly is still a pretty solid team.

The Eagles played a great opening two quarters in New York today. Up until the last play of the half - when the Giants blocked a David Akers field goal attempt and ran it back, turning a possible 13-0 Philadelphia lead into a mere 10-7 advantage -- Philly did everything it needed to in order to take down arguably the NFL's best team.

The whole show started with the Eagles' defense. Philadelphia never managed to sack Eli Manning, but the secondary stepped up and held him to a 5-for-15 first half through the air. The Giants ran for 59 yards, 43 of them coming from Brandon Jacobs, but Philadelphia seemed content to let that happen, so long as Manning never got hot. Philly even managed to take away New York's near-automatic kicker John Carney, packing a long field goal attempt to keep the Giants off the board.

But while the defense was impressive, the offensive performance was equally as strong. It's not an unusual strategy the Eagles used offensively, either: Get the ball in Westbrook's hands early, and let his ability open up the rest.

It worked in the first quarter, where a few Westbrook shots on the ground and a Westbrook reception set up a 32-yard McNabb-to-Kevin Curtis pass that led to an Akers field goal.

Then the Eagles' TD drive later in the half came from a similar scenario. Westbrook carried three times, McNabb tossed a couple of short passes, and eventually the nickle-and-diming carried over to a long Westbrook touchdown run.

Whether Philadelphia can stick to the script for another half remains to be seen, but the first 30 minutes offered no indication that things will change. Amidst all the McNabb hullabaloo, and Westbrook's frequent nicks, we forget that the Eagles aren't half bad. They beat Pittsburgh, they slaughtered Arizona and all five of their losses are to good teams. That Cincinnati tie has them in worse shape than they probably should be.

The postseason outlook gets a lot sunnier, though, if Philadelphia can keep this up.

Related Articles

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)