Eagles Wake Up In Time To Beat Redskins

Penalties. Red zone failures. Short-yardage struggles. Dropped passes. Missed tackles. Awful third down offense and defense. Botched special teams. No pass rush besides Trent Cole. A lack of emotion. Severely outcoached. Do these things sound familiar?

Of course they do. That’s how our beloved Eagles have played all season long. However, today they managed to eke out a victory thanks to a couple youngins. Shady McCoy and Jeremy Maclin picked up the slack in the fourth quarter and helped engineer a frustrating thrilling 27-24 win. I guess McNabb and Reid took umbrage with the claim that they could no longer win the close ones. They’ve now done it in consecutive weeks.

Like most games of late, this was textbook ugly. The Redskins were without their top two running backs, starting tight end, two offensive lineman, best cover corner and stud defensive tackle, and still outplayed the Birds for most of the game. Ugh.

It was another maddeningly inconsistent game in which the offense left points on the field and the defense failed to get off the field. Lots o’ missed opportunities, but fortunately they didn’t prove disastrous. Let’s face facts. The Eagles are a dumb team. They have a tendency to lose focus and poise in critical situations. They also keep losing bodies. DeSean Jackson suffered a concussion. Not good.

(If you’re keeping count, that’s two guys taken out by London Fletcher. Westy and now DeSean.)

For better or worse, this is how the Eagles are playing the ’09 campaign. It’s not fun, but we’ll just have to accept it. Nothing is going to come easy for this bunch. If nothing else, it will make for an interesting December. Up next are the struggling Falcons, who lost wunderkind quarterback Matt Ryan to a toe injury today.

We can all exhale. Birds move to 7-4.

Subscribe to ITI