Eagles Suffer Giant Loss At Home

Don't let the score deceive you this was a beat down. Giants 36 - Eagles 31

Ouch! The truth hurts. Oh yes the Eagles had a legitimate chance to steal this one from the Giants and that is hard enough to swallow knowing they failed on short yardage yet again. But the harsh reality was the Eagles got rolled in their own house.

The Giants ran the ball 45 times for 219 yards down the throat of the Eagles defense. That is an alarming 4.9 yards per carry! Add the 182 yards of passing and you have a total of 401 yards yielded in your house. That's called getting punked.

The Eagles for their part had moments and were able to get 300 yards against a stalwart Giants defense. So what happened? I think the answer is in what didn't happen.

If you examine the Giants offense notice an interesting perspective. Their 45 rushing attempts were so successful that you would assume they did not need to throw the ball much. And while they did run at will, they did attempt 31 passes. That is 76 plays, 45 runs, 31 passes. Which is about a 60/40 split between pass/run play calls. Now considering how easy it was to run you would assume a team to take advantage of that. But all things considered this was fairly balanced and effective. It also added up to 39.10 of ball possession.

Now look at the Eagles, what they did and didn't do. They also basically had a 60/40 pass/run split. Here is the drawback to that for them. Donovan McNabb hit a pedestrian 17 for 36. To his credit it did result in 3 TD's. Completing less than 50% in today's NFL is bad however. And they were throwing the ball at lame 5.4 yard attempt. On the other hand there 21 carries resulted in 106 yards which is 5.0 yards per carry. Now it should also be noted that 35 of those yards came on 3 McNabb runs. So while that paints a bleaker picture on the overall run production the fact is Andy Reid did his usual abandon the run routine. Which at no point were they so far behind in points that they needed to abandon rushing the ball. In fact they took the lead at one point!

It also cost them time of possession. Which could have helped the Eagles defense. Especially since the actual defense couldn't stop the Giants RB's while on the field. So it would have proven advantageous to keep the Giants offense off the field. It may have kept the lead had they sustained long drives.

Thus it should also be noted that Brian Westbrook only had 16 total touches in the game!

Which again exposes a continuing quagmire for the Eagles. Brian Westbrook is an All-Pro in this league but the Eagles running game is deficient as a whole. The Eagles enter every game being considered somewhat one dimensional. First by design and second by their refusal to develop, draft or sign a power back. Let's face it Correll Buckhalter has had some nice moments but he does the same thing that Westbrook does. And so does the missing in action Lorenzo Booker. Or that is what he allegedly does.

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The Eagles resorted to doing the now popular “wildcat” formation using DeSean Jackson. Why not try getting him the ball as a result of a well designed passing play? Jackson would be a nice trickeration diversion but a wide receiver should never, yes NEVER, be needed to resuscitate a rushing attack.

They continue to fail in short yardage situations which is also indicative of not being able to smash mouth the ball 3 yards when you need it. It bit them in the butt again in this game.

This loss was not mathematically damaging overall but their playoff hopes or success is in serious trauma. And they don't have enough bullets in the chamber to hit the target.

By Andy Natalie
ProFootball-fans.com Staff Writer