2009/01/19

Eagles Lose Again in NFC Championship


The Eagles lost in the NFC Championship game 32-25 against the Arizona Cardinals failing to reach the Super Bowl. The Eagles are now 1-4 in NFC Championship games in the past eight seasons. It's a tough, depressing end to the season, which we have seen far too much as Eagles fans.

The Eagles really failed to show up for this game, as the Cardinals dominated the first half. The Eagles rushing attack was ineffective, McNabb was missing open receivers, and the receivers were dropping passes. This was all occurring while the Cardinals were marching up and down the field at will against the Eagles defense. This was mostly due to the best receiver in the game, Larry Fitzgerald. It's amazing what having a #1 receiver can do for your team. The Eagles started playing well in the 2nd half, and took the lead 25-24 in the 4th quarter, but then gave up the deciding touchdown drive, which the Cardinals made look easy.

McNabb again came up short in the postseason. Brian Westbrook was ineffective for the entire postseason. The Eagles still don't have an actual #1 receiver. The defense, which has really been the reason the Eagles got this far, played poorly. Greg Lewis is still on the team, which is embarrassing. Quintin Demps had three very poor plays, and really shouldn't have been playing as much as he was, especially when you have a former pro-bowler with a lot of playoff experience in Lito Sheppard sitting on the bench. Demps had a good chance to tackle Hightower and the one or two yard line on the Cardinals touchdown, but failed to wrap Hightower up.

The Eagles have a lot of questions coming this offseason, and we will address them further once we have time to recover from this loss.

4 comments:

Jay Floyd said...

Not much to say about this game.

You've got mail.

Joe Linden said...

i personally am laying low today, trying to recover.

Anonymous said...

Finally a sensible comment from one of the Gold Standard twins. After the humiliating (and all too familiar) butt flogging, Banner said this about the 1-4 Conference Champ record: "When you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, it's just foolish. We need to take a serious look at how we're doing everything." No telling what actions at what levels this "serious look" will translate into, but at least Joe strayed from the usual tired line of "we just need a few tweaks." I guess time will tell...

Anonymous said...

i am calling out the eagles for playing demps, he had an awful game. i understand lito played poorly this season, but he has been there before. let him play over demps, for the whole playoffs. we drafted demps to return kicks and he was exposed out there when he was playing defense. i cannot watch anymore football this year