By now you’ve probably noticed that the Eagles are winning far fewer games than the “all of them” we were promised. With a 3-6 record, it does seem hauntingly apparent that the Eagles are doing a handful of rather key things incorrectly. Will they even make the playoffs? Will they finish above the Cowboys in the standings? And most importantly, will Vince Young be proven a liar? But there’s far more at stake than Vince Young’s reputation, which anyone from 2006 will tell you is impossible.
Putting all of the good players on the same team is a time-honored solution to losing all the time. For instance, across the street, Ruben Amaro assembled the transcendent Phillies’ starting rotation that took them all the way to only the first round of the playoffs. Which isn’t a world championship, but its still something people will remember. Even if they remember it solely out of drunken bitterness.
At no point during their regular season were the Phillies out of contention, and the Eagles pretty much are. What went wrong, exactly? Well, “exactly” is a hard word to answer to. So let’s back off a bit and ask “What went wrong, probably?”
Andy Reid
I was telling someone recently the only defense Reid has from criticism is the same grotesque sympathy one would feel if they walked in on a sad walrus getting kicked to death. But obviously you can blame the coach when a team is failing, because he’s in charge and clearly he’s being in charge wrong if the BEST TEAM EVER is 3-6.
One indication of his poor gamesmanship is that he refuses to let Shady McCoy hold the football. Shady is what we in the biz call “pretty good,” in that when he receives a handoff, he tends to take it further through traffic and holes than other people in the same situation. He’s slick and sharp and boy he is just the guy you want taking your football and going places with it.
But, even with Jeremy Maclin out because of injury and Desean Jackson out because of rules, Reid still made sure Shady didn’t touch the ball that much. Which was weird, when you consider how much more of a chance at winning the Eagles would have had.
It may be time to allow Reid to leave this place and swim for the swirling waters of Chukchi Sea, where he will fill his stomach with shrimp, crabs, and tube worms until mating season moves the herd to the Bering Strait.
Boy you don't even want to know about the mating.
Desean Jackson
If you’re one of the countless people blaming Jackson’s suspension on a contract dispute, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The meeting he missed on Saturday was because he was too asleep to remember he was supposed to be there, not because he’s stubborn and self-absorbed. Whew.
Regardless, the absence got him benched for Sunday’s game, a game in which having a starting receiver out there probably would have been a little more awesome for the Eagles. We’ll never know what the outcome of the game would have been had Jackson played in it, but I mean its not like it could have gotten much worse. Probably worth sticking your top receiver out there just to see what he can do.
Michael Vick
Why won’t his ribs stop breaking?
Kevin Kolb
Kevin is probably confused, because he’s being paid as if he is worth… money. And poor Kevin, he just isn’t. If your team has Larry Fitzgerald on it, you should probably be completing far more passes than Kevin seems to. Normally, we would be able to laugh at his facepalm of a season/career and move on, but since the Cardinals were the latest team to take advantage of a Dream Team that can’t even get to sleep, Kevin is a more recent annoyance.
I had to Google “John Skelton” to figure out why some guy was being allowed on the field on Sunday, but once I did, and realized he was Arizona’s quarterback, it hit me three quarters later that Kevin wouldn’t even be playing in this game. But apparently he didn’t let that stop him from being effective, which figures that he would be moreso off the field.
As gutless traitors tend to do, Kevin gave up all the insider info on the Eagles’ game plan that he could remember in a series of panicked shrieks. Once the Cardinals realized it wasn’t just another lapse into deranged hysteria due to chronic turf toe, they used the information to their advantage.
