[slight hijack]
I thought real Philly people preferred whiz? I mean, you walk into Gino’s or Pats (I think Pats is the one favored by locals, yes?) and you order a ‘whiz wit,’ am I wrong in this thinking?
[football pedant]
The Philadelphia Eagles were the NFC champions after the 1980 regular season and playoffs (which took place in January of 1981). The AFC Champion Oakland Raiders went on to beat the Eagles 27-10 in Super Bowl XV.
[/football pedant]
Except, Arizona also gave up LESS TOTAL YARDAGE.
ZONA gave up 18 TDs to 15 INTs.
PHI gave up 16 TDs to 17 INTs, with more sacks.
Better percentage, better yards per game, worse TD/INT ratio, worse in sacks. Let’s not let this devolve into a thread comparing Zona and Philly’s respective pass defenses but just because Zona stinks doesn’t mean they didn’t have a few decent aspects to their game this year. And with those numbers, and considering their respective competition, I think you can make a case that Zona’s pass D was as good.
Now get this. . .of the worst 6 teams in passing this year in the NFL, Philapdelphia played 7 games against 5 of them. Almost half their games against 5 of the worst 6 passing teams in the league. You get 8 games if you snag the 10th worst passing team, Detroit.
Oh, yeah, they also played 2 of the top 3 passing teams in the league. What did they do in those games? Gave up 332 yards to Minnesota and 200 yards to Green Bay, an average of 260.
Well, they were tied for 5th for most passing TDs in the league, and were 11th in total yardage. They were a pretty damn good passing team, regardless of how often they ran the ball.
Slight hijack here…
Anyone happen to have a link that gives a list of the individual Eagles contract status? Or, barring that, anyone know which Eagles contacts expire at the end of this season?
Not really “some people” but more like “nearly all of the starters on both sides of the ball.” In other words, 1/8 of the season’s stats on total offense and defense are comprised of squads that were pretty much sent out to lose and hopefully not get hurt.
The starters had a 13-1 record on the season and I believe the Pats’ starters went 14-2, which is indeed impressive given the schedule. But one of those losses was against a team with a losing record. Obviously no one is in control of their scheduling.
That’s right, because they jumped to such big leads in most of those games that teams had to go to the pass for most of the second half.
The Birds scored over 40 points against Green bay in that game, so if 200 only managed 200 yds in the air I’d say that’s a pretty good job of pass defense. And, again, we had homefield wrapped up at 13-1 and sat the starters for two games. Take a look at all of the Eagles’ rankings after Week 15 (that is, after 14 games played) and I think that’ll give you a better picture.
At Pat’s you have a choice of American, provolone or whiz and I’m a provolone fan myself. I believe Geno’s has the same options but I rarely go there; I couldn’t articulate a rationale for this but people have their loyalties. And it is a half-block closer to where I live… (Geno’s has gotten quite flashy with neon and such, and being slightly north of Pat’s is most likely to be first encountered by and catch the eye of the tourist.)
Did a little bit of research on this once and the cheesesteak is not surprisingly a bit older than the Whiz… um, product, therefore actual cheese is the original version by default. It’s hard to say when exactly the steak started, and there are 4 places I know of in the city claiming to be the “original” place (I suspect that none of them are and some street vendor or greasy spoon lost to time was).
I find that whiz is too salty and overpowers the flavor of the steak, but to each her own. (Plus it’s called whiz …)
At most of the places in my neighborhood growing up and most of the street vendors I’ve eaten at, I’m not even certain whiz is an option. There are probably other places where it’s the default. If you come, don’t feel the need to have to go to one of the famous places; pretty much any pizza and hoagie shop or street cart can fix you up with much the same genuine article, and you might even save a buck. People are pretty much using the same wholesalers for the ingredients.
OR, you guys could do a little work yourselves and stop wasting my time with nitpicks that you think are arguments.
Without the last two weeks of the season, the average Eagles Pass Yards given up per game would have dropped from 200.8 to 195.8. 5 total yards per game. That would have leap-frogged them over exactly 1 team in total passing, the Saint Louis Rams.
http://home.nc.rr.com/rosmith/eagles/ecr.html
They’ve locked in a lot of their key players for a while; I think Mitchell is pretty much gone. He’s never been happy as a #3 & obviously everyone is exasperated with him in a lot of ways. That said, I find him highly entertaining and think he is a great third down receiver (only 22 catches on the year yes, but almost all for first downs or TDs). He was the only guy on the team last year who could’ve caught the 4th and 26 ball, and then he’s also caught a couple of McNabb’s other highlight reel passes, including that 14+ second scramble play against Dallas. On another team he might fit in better as a starter.
Part of the fun is trying to keep up with the nicknames… just stop taking him seriously and he’s very entertaining.
I think “most teams abandoned the run because they were down by double digits” is a pretty solid argument for why the passing stats are high.
Now start subtracting the turnovers, TDs, points, etc. from those last two games too and you’ll see all of the stats rise accordingly.
And I think “playing 7 games against 5 of the worst 6 passing teams in the league” is a pretty good argument for why they’re actually too low.
And so, according to you, their rushing statistics must be equally artificially high. Let’s take a look shall we? Link. What’s that? 16th in the league? 18th in the league in yards per carry?
Seems over the past few days, the Eagles have become the trendy pick to win the game. Over at Yahoo appears a small collection of pre-Super Bowl articles from various publications, most picking the Eagles.
Way better game than I expected. Didn’t really think the Eagles were second-best in the NFL (thought Pats, Colts, & Steelers were better), but they represented themselves very well tonight.
I’m a little confused, though, as to why, down ten points with three minutes left in the game, they didn’t even seem to be hurrying to get the next play off. It was a bizarre lack of hustle, and may have cost them three to four plays from scrimmage, and therefore the game.
I think their clock management was bizarre. I know that McNabb and Andy Reid know better than that, so maybe they had some other sort of strategy going on. I really don’t know.
Anyway – good game. The Eagles looked better than I thought they would. The Pats were really able to control some clock with the ground game, and nicely took advantage of the Eagle’s aggressiveness with some of those screens.
I think both of those Eagle’s TDs in the second half were aided by the loss of Eugene Wilson, but Pinkston went out for the Eagles too so that mitigates that a little.
Congratualtions, Pats! Quite a team you have there. I wish both sides brought their “A” game and it would have been a much better contest. I don’t think anyone on our side except Owens (!) and Pinkston (this is high irony) brought it.
I was off-line for a few days. Very disappointing all the way around. We just handed that game away in the second half, especially in Reid and McNabb’s 4th quarter meltdown.
I can assure everyone that the entire city of Philadelphia was screaming at their TVs at Reid for the way that he handled the clock at the end of both halves. And McNabb picked a hell of a game to have one of his shaky ones. Those two stop melting down at the end of the season and maybe we’ll finally win one.
45 years for football, 22 years for all team sports, and counting… 
Courtesy of Nathan Henry of Wilmington, Del., via TMQ:
*Walk, Eagles, walk
With no sense of urgency!
Talk, Eagles, talk
Form a huddle 1, 2, 3.
Take your time, have a chat
We don’t care where the clock is at.
Walk, Eagles, walk
With no sense of urgency! *