He’s more Bruce Smith than Emmitt Smith.
Romo’s performance on Sunday, of course. It’s his reputation for consistency and never playing down to bad teams that makes that predicted record a mortal lock.
(And he’s predicting four-straight, not three – nothing laughable about that, nosirree…)
As a fan of the Giants, I appreciate that the losses they give me are fun, exciting games to watch.
Not a fan of that first 4th down attempt, even though it worked. Coughlin has always been aggressive with 4th down plays, though, so I can’t complain.
DeMarco Murray
Week 11: @ Was
Week 12: MIA
Week 13: @ AZ
It looks like the obituaries are beginning to be written about the Eagle’s 2011 season. I was disappointed that Bank’s article was short on data or analysis of players outside of single-sentence snippets.
Would you believe Week 14: NYG (6-6)?
LeSean McCoy is the NFL’s first 1,000 yard rusher this season.
Dallas:
Vs. Mia, @ Ari, vs. NYG, @ TB, vs. Phi, @ NYG
I think there are two losses in there at least. I’d guess three, and if I had to say, I think it would be Miami, Philly, and at the Giants.
New York Giants:
@ NO, vs. GB, @ Dal, vs. Was, @ NYJ, vs. Dal
I see at least three losses here, and maybe four. I can see them losing to NO and the annual collapse talk heating up. I’d take them against the Packers if the Packers weren’t going to have an extra three days of rest. That’s 6-6 and then the weight of the collapse really starting to bear down on them. If they just split with Dallas, there’s the three, and if the pressure is enough and the dead-Coughlin-walking talk really gets going, they’d lose another in the last three. That’s 9-7 at best.
So that brings me to my point. If each of those happened, Dallas would finish at 9-7 and the Giants at 9-7. That means the Eagles would have to go 5-1 the rest of the way (vs. NE, @ Sea, @ Mia, vs. NYJ, @ Dal, vs. Was) to tie the division and they’d win on tie-breakers.
The Vick injury couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I think the Eagles match up very well with New England and I think they’d beat them handily at full strength. The Seattle game worried me from before the start of the season, and the subsequent trip across country again to face Miami is troubling as well because of the logistics. If they survive that 2-1 they’d get a beatable Jets team at home, a Dallas team they dominated, and a Washington team they beat on the road when their entire season was falling apart.
I mean, it’s from behind Green colored glasses, but I can see 5-1 in that stretch to finish 9-7. Then again, maybe that’s only because they’re coming off a win instead of another fucking awful loss. It’s easy, when you take a step back, to see this team losing two or three of those just like they have all season.
That brings up another fascinating (to me) subplot on this Eagles season: the team psychology. I wonder if this team has gotten the monkey off their back with the last win against the Giants. If losing so many games so similarly, and to finally steal back a victory they were poised to give away once again, could prove a turning point and a confidence builder for what is still a very young team.
Beating New England would go a long way to driving that message home and salvaging the season at the last possible moment. Shame they might be out their top two wideouts and their QB, though.
I just don’t see the Eagles making the playoffs or .500. Their offensive line just isn’t very good and their defense isn’t all that great. The loss of Asomugha won’t help anything. I think they would do well to go three and three to finish the season.
You can not see the Eagles getting to .500 and that’s defensible just based on their level of play all season, but your own reasons for thinking so are completely wrong.
The Eagles have had one of the best O-Lines all season long and have at least three guys who deserve Pro Bowl consideration, and in the case of Peters, is as much a lock as there is. Nobody has played the position better so far that I’ve seen. Part of the reason for this strangely backwards meme is that people see Vick getting hit all time on replays and because he’s getting crushed a second after throwing on a large portion of his dropbacks. You don’t get to see the four to five seconds he holds the ball before that hit.
They lead the league in rushing by a significant margin and have the league’s leading rusher to boot. They held the Giants (the league’s leaders in sacks at the time) to a single sack, which was actually a coverage sack and not the fault of the line at all.
As for their defense, they have been average. Typically very good in the first three quarters and historically awful in the 4th. But it averages out to 12th in yards allowed and 16th in PPG allowed. Average. And plenty good enough to win a lot of games with their explosive offense if they could just hold leads in the 4th.
I’m glad we agree on the Eagles’ defense, but we’ll have to differ on the O-line. Pardon me if I don’t accept the analysis of someone who thinks that Jason Avant is better than Steve Smith or that the Eagles’ back-ups could win 6 games.
Oh please.
As much as I want the Eagles to play better down the stretch, I don’t want them to make the playoffs. If the Cowboys and Giants collapse and they back in at 9-7, management learns nothing. They’ll let Andy continue to make Reid-like moves such as promoting a guy with no defensive experience to DC in a season with no minicamps and a short training camp.
All that said, I don’t think the Egles sneak in. It’s not unbelievable that the Eagles would beat the Pats. But they still have Seattle (in a short week) and Dallas on the road. And if Ryan and Sanchez get their heads out of their asses, we could still lose to the Jets.
Most of us are on the verge of checking out. We’ve had more fun at the tailgates than inside the stadium this year. I expect the same tomorrow.
After 11 games the Redskins and Eagles have the same number of wins, and if someone had told me that that would be the case before the season started I’d have taken it in a heartbeat.
I feel a bit like I’m in one of those old Twilight Zone episodes where the guy gets his wish granted by some genie or something, but there’s that unexpected twist in the results meant to remind us to be careful what we wish for.
So far, so good.
It seems like the vast majority of people believe Andy Reid is done in Philly. The majority opinion before Thursday night was that Reid was in trouble but that Lurie wouldn’t fire him unless something truly awful happened. I think everyone is really overreacting to the Seattle loss. It’s almost funny how manipulated and manufactured the reaction has been. Nevertheless, everyone thinks Reid is done.
I think that’s probably going to be a mistake, but it isn’t as if I’m going to swear off the team if it happened. Nothing is changing in Philly. The same mistakes keep getting made, the same way, and there seems to be no awareness and introspection by Reid and company. So I won’t wallow in misery if Reid is fired but I’ll be pretty upset if there isn’t a really good candidate in the wings. I just don’t know who could possibly be available/better.
I will be upset if a coaching change costs the team Washburn and Mudd. Both have been phenomenal this season. Bobby April too.
“No matter what they chant at the Linc or how badly the Eagles play, it appears that Andy Reid is safe, according to those who are close to the situation. There appears to be only one scenario in which Reid could be let go: if Eagles ownership tries to force Reid to make a staff change he does not want to make (hello, Juan Castillo), Reid could refuse and put the target on his own back.”
Since the Packers have a Super Bowl winning head coach, it matters not to me, but Reid would last all of .3 seconds in the unemployment line.
I find it hard to believe that Andy sticks around but anything is possible. The off-season moves were indefensible and I really do think that the team has quit on him. Lurie loves him, but at some point the fear of the unknown has to give way to the reality of a 5-11 season (assuming Philly beats the Skins).
I’m buying my can of Norv Away just in case.