On Eagles, Giants and Johnsons

It’s really easy to hate the Eagles. No running game to speak of….there’s Brian Westbrook of course, but somehow he’s just not that inspirational. Yesterday, he scored on a screen, typical of the kind of garbage offense on which Westbrook and McNabb seem to thrive.

Their passing game looked a little better yesterday than I am used to seeing from them. DeSean Jackson was fun to watch and Kevin Curtis looked good too. McNabb was his old self, eluding a fierce rush more often than not and firing darts at the last moment to a bunch of receivers that had maybe a foot of separation from their defender.

Then there’s their vaunted defense, featuring cheap-shot artist Brian Dawkins. I’m sorry, I know he’s a great player but his hit on Adrian Peterson while he was down (some will say he was on his way down but Peterson was down) really ticked me off. Like the NBA, I guess, the longer you’ve been doing it, the better the calls.

Then there’s Andy Reid, the epitome of boring, that is, until you compare him to Brad Childress, the Vikings head coach. What a poor excuse for a head coach is Childress. I would have won that game as the head coach. I’ll just pick two situations in which Childress showed his lack of intellect, his utter lack of a feel for the game.

The first was his decision to refuse a holding penalty in the first quarter, thus leaving David Akers well within his field goal range and give the Eagles the lead. The lead is an important thing to have in any endeavor, of course, but in football, it’s especially nice. It changes the whole game a bit in favor of the guys with the lead.

Then in the second quarter, Adrian Peterson had just run on first down for six yards through that supposedly tough Eagles run defense. He came back to the huddle exuding confidence and ready for more pounding. You could see he was thinking it would be easy. But he would never get the opportunity.

Childress called a pass on 2nd and 4! With the best running back in football rearing to go, chomping at the bit for another chance. With an inexperienced QB in his first playoff game. The pass was incomplete, of course. Childress still had a chance on 3rd and 4 but he eschewed the run again for still another ill-advised pass.

But this one wasn’t just ill-advised, it was reckless, a pass to the flat. And, of course, Asante Samuel picked it off and ran for 40 yards or so and it was all over but the shoutin’. It was the key play of the game, changing the momentum and putting the offensively-challenged Birds into the end zone for the first time.

Peterson wouldn’t get that many more opportunities. Maybe it was because of Dawkins’s cheap shot on Peterson earlier. We certainly saw a lot of Chester Taylor yesterday, no slouch himself, but incapable of wreaking the havoc of a Peterson.

Oh well, it’s over. One more ridiculous coach and his team bites the dust, at home in front of all of its fans. The Vikings had the best offense, they had the best defense and they had the better team all around but they would go home with that empty feeling, wondering perhaps what could have happened if they had a real head coach on the sidelines.

I should probably be happy. The weaker team advanced, and as there’s still a chance for our G-Men, they’ll simply have to put a pounding on the Eagles rather than having to face the Vikings somewhere down the road. Of course, the Eagles don’t give games away, which might be a bit of a problem.

Why are all the tough guys in Philadelphia? There’s Dawkins, of course, but there was also Jimmy Rollins. And that pain in the butt at 2nd base. And that guy in the outfield who only hit against the Mets. And that other guy who only hit in the clutch.

Giants fans can only hope the G-Men will change up their defensive gameplan this time around. Otherwise, they’ll lose. The G-Men got just one sack vs. Philly in Week 14 and they lost 20-14. I’m hoping they have some stuff up their sleeves as they did against the Pats in the Super Bowl, after having lost to them in Week 17 of last year.

There were also some extenuating circumstances in that Week 14 game, the first after Plax’s suspension and after Antonio Pierce’s grilling by the police. But, more than that, Jacobs hurt his knee in the third quarter and didn’t return. And Hixon dropped a sure touchdown that hit him in the hands.

I wish I could feel better about this upcoming Eagles contest. You don’t feel the same magic with this Giants team as you did with last year’s team. There is no Osi and no Strahan. There is no Plaxico. Hixon is not Plax. And Sinorice Moss doesn’t adequately spell Hixon as a return man.

That doesn’t mean they can’t beat the Eagles but one can’t expect too much. They’ll be at home, but that doesn’t make me feel that much better. They’re just not as versatile as last year’s version that could run the ball, pass the ball and play great on specials too. This version seems more like Brandon Jacobs and a cloud of dust.

Meanwhile, the Jets coaching search allegedly continues and the list of potential candidates grows longer and longer. But it’s a sham, I think. The winner will be whoever Jets owner Woody Johnson likes, and his mouthpiece Mr. Tannenbaum. I can’t root for a team that, literally, thinks with its Johnson.

The whole process kinda reminds me of that old joke, the punchline of which is “the one with the big”, um, oh never mind. Oh well, Jets fans, “if it works out, it works out, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t”.