The Philadelphia Eagles continue to shock the world. Yesterday they did what no one thought was possible—they marched into the Meadowlands and defeated the defending Super Bowl New York Giants in a divisional playoff round game 23-11. The game was close, hard-hitting and was up for grabs as late as the fourth quarter. The two teams went into the halftime with Philly up 10-8 after McNabb engineered a two-minute drive for a field goal by Akers. The two teams traded field goals in the third quarter and Philly was up 13-11 when the Eagles finally put together a touchdown drive to go ahead 20-11. Then the Giants stalled out at fourth and inches and the Eagles made a big defensive stop. The Eagles went three and out but the Giants again got to their own forty and got to fourth and around two and went for it again—and the Eagles stopped them again. This time the Eagles offense converted a long pass play to DeSean Jackson and while they didn’t make the TD, they converted another Akers FG to go up 23-11 with a little over four minutes to play in the fourth quarter. This pretty much iced it. Manning on his next series threw a pick and Philly again wasted clock with another offensive possession.
The Eagles won by controlling the second half with defense, by running the football about as often as they passed, and by controlling the line of scrimmage on both offense and defense. After a while, with the Giants defense out there so long, you could see the Giants defense getting tired, as great and awesome as they are. The Eagles had a 2-1 edge in time of possession in the second half. They simply dominated the Giants in the second half.
This was a terrific win for the Eagles, one of the finest wins in the playoffs in the Andy Reid era, perhaps the finest. A win over an NFC East rival on the road in the opponents stadium as a wild card having played the week before is a tall order, but Andy Reid dialed up a good game plan and won with it. Again, the keys to the game were a sound McNabb, a healthy Westbrook, a great DeSean Jackson and an awesome Eagles defense.
We should stop for a moment and appreciate what Andy Reid has now accomplished—five NFC Championship round appearances in eight years. The chance of doing this randomly in anyone year is the chance of making the playoffs (six out of 16) or .375 (37.5%) times the chance of winning at least one more playoff games (.5 or 50%) which aggregates to .1875 or 18.75% in any single season randomly. Leaving out the combinatorics of doing it five out of eight seasons (56 ways), assuming you had to do this five straight seasons would be .1875 times itself five times would would be .00023 or .023% chance of this happening randomly. That’s 23 chances in 10,000 seasons. The odds improve a bit when you stretch it over eight seasons, but still, it’s an impressive accomplishment. Andy Reid is clearly staking his claim for the Hall of Fame among NFL Coaches.
Of course, I’ve already gone out on that limb and said the Eagles would go to the Super Bowl this year. That prediction is looking better after Arizona knocked Carolina out of the playoffs. The Eagles knocked the stuffing out of Arizona on Thanksgiving day. Not that Arizona will lay down and die at home during the NFC championship game. Kurt Warner is an experienced quarterback who has won the Super Bowl, and who has defeated the Eagles in the NFC Championship round with St. Louis back in 2001, though he had Marshall Faulk back then to do it with and a pretty good defense. But he does have a renewed Edgerrin James, who has been enjoying a renaissance in the playoffs, and the Cardinals running game has been respectable enough to give their passing game some respectability. Moreover, the Eagles may have a letdown after their emotional win over the Giants. They may underestimate the Cardinals.
A historical note: The Eagles last met the Cardinals in a playoff game in 1947, for the NFL title. The Chicago Cardinals defeated the Philadelphia Eagles for the NFL title in that game. The Eagles came back to win the NFL title in 1948 and 1949. It’s taken 61 years, but this is the Eagles time for revenge and payback. Besides, what kind of crazy person would leave a great town like Chicago for St. Louis or Arizona?
The keys to this upcoming game are that Warner is a stationary QB vulnerable to the blitz; and the Cardinals weak defense. Also the Eagles good secondary has to maintain coverage on the fleet-footed Arizona receivers. The Eagles must maintain the same kind of game plan that resulted in a blowout from Thanksgiving while making adjustments in light of Arizona’s last two big wins.
I believe the Eagles will win at Arizona, though it will not be a blowout as before. I also think that the Steelers will finally knock Baltimore out of the playoffs, though Baltimore is playing very, very well. And we will finally have an all-PA Super Bowl of Steelers v. Eagles in Tampa, where there are a lot of ex-PA people living as snowbirds.
–Art Kyriazis Philly/South Jersey
Home of the World Champion Phillies
Happy New Year 2009
Tags: Art Kyriazis, Arthur Athanasios Ioannis Kyriazis, Arthur Athanasios Kyriazis, arthur j kyriazis, ARTHUR JOHN KYRIAZIS, Arthur Kyriazis, Athanasios Ioannis Kyriazis, Athanasios Kyriazis, Donovan McNabb, Eagles, football, McNabb, NFL, Philadelphia Eagles, Playoffs, Sports
January 12, 2009 at 10:25 pm |
The Cardinals’ team that the Eagles faced then and’ll face this weekend are two vastly different teams. This time around the Cardinals’ll be playing with a lot more confidence having the knowledge that they now possess some semblance of a running game and a defense that finally knows what to when the other team has the ball.
The case couldn’t be made when they met in that regular season game.
And if they should be able to slow down Westbrook then the task for the Eagles won’t be made any easier at all.
tophatal …………