Eagles Get Lucky; Defense Redeems Itself
When all is said and done, the Eagles probably should have lost to the Chargers. With 3-4 minutes to go I kept repeating to myself “3-3″ , “3-3″ - it sounded terrible, but I couldn’t see them winning this game.
The Eagles offense was miserable. When it came to penalties: miserable. When it came to red zone performance: miserable. When it came to third down conversions: miserable. When it came to hitting the wide open receiver: miserable. San Diego’s defense just ain’t that good.
The Eagles defense was unbelievable. If anyone doubted their abilities after the Dallas game, this should have put an end to that. San Diego has what may be considered the most potent offense in football. They’ve got the best running back, one of the best tight ends and a very strong receiving core. The Eagles defense shut them down, starting with LT at his meager 7 yards TOTAL rushing.
But for all the effort of the defense, the game looked like it was lost. You can’t just play defense, you’ve got to score some points. And the offense wasn’t doing it. Even when they were in the red zone, they couldn’t manage the clock nor the field correctly.
Well, that’s where the special teams came in. After Donovan had thrown an interception deep in his own territory, the defense got a stop on San Diego, and then the Chargers set up for a field goal to go up by 7. And then the unthinkable happened. Quintin Mikell came off the left side of the D-line untouched and managed to block the field goal backwards and gave his teamate, Matt Ware a PERFECT bounce off to the left side of the field and Ware was able to run it back for a TD (though it wasn’t always clear that he’d make it before getting tackeled).
Well, that wasn’t the end of the game. The Eagles were only up by a field goal. The Chargers got the ball back and drove down the field, and I was saying to myself “defense - don’t let me down now!” But in a sense they did let up as the Chargers got the ball into Eagles territory and then they completed a pass down to the 20 yard line. Oh…please…no… and then, Sheldon Brown ripped the ball out of the receiver’s hands. Now the cool thing about this play was that Brown had to rip UP and in the process, pulled the receiver up just a little bit with him. On the instant replay, the receiver’s knee was probably less than an inch from the ground when the ball came loose so it turns out that Brown’s rip kept the guy off the ground and simultaneously brought the ball loose. The Eagles got the ball back and ran down the clock.
Now that doesn’t happen every Sunday.
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Posted on October 24, 2005 by Micah | Filed Under Eagles, Philadelphia
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