Well – I guess all that out of sync business didn’t really pan out. Mmmmmm……crow…..
The Eagles looked great in nearly every facet of the game, dismantling the Panthers in Carolina – and perhaps raising the expectations of their season before it really gets going.
You all know we don’t pretend to be football experts here, but are huge Birds fans – so here are my amateur observations of Game 1.
The Good Stuff
- Our D-Line was dominant, and dominant against a team with a good offensive line. The Panthers were 3rd in the NFL last year in rushing offense and we held them to just 86 yards rushing. Bunkley, Patterson and Laws were disruptive in the middle and Cole, Howard and Abiamiri put pressure on the QB all day and scored the first TD of the year for the Birds. This has the potential to be a deep and dominant unit.
- Speaking of deep and dominant, the offensive line (after Peters finally figured out the snap count) also looked fantastic. The Birds averaged 5.8 yards per carry and the QB’s were kept on their feet for the majority of the game. Also, to credit Winston Justice, I didn’t hear his named called once – which means he probably played pretty well.
- DeSean Jackson is faaaasssst
- Brian Westbrook looked relatively shifty and made some decent moves. Have to be encouraged with what we saw there.
- 1 non D-Line player who really impressed me was Chris Gocong. With Bradley out, we need the linebackers to step up their game, and Gocong seemed to be all over the field and involved in a lot of big plays today.
- Sean McDermott seemed to call the right plays as most of the blitzes he called seemed to work and the defense shut down the Panthers. Between him and Quintin Mikell, we might not be as short on defensive leadership as we thought.
- For a contract or not – Sheldon Brown is going to play hard this year.
The Bad Stuff
- McNabb’s injury isn’t good, but it’s not the end of the world. If we lose to the Saints and beat the Cheifs without him, we’ll be in fine position after our Week 4 bye. I say the priority is getting him healthy, not forcing him back in a game.
- The game got out of hand so fast, and without the help of the offense, that the offense didn’t get all that much time to play together. With McNabb likely out next week – they still might need to some time to find their “rhythm.”
- Jake Delhomme looked very much like I would expect I would look if I was thrown into an NFL game. Were we that good? Or was he just that bad? We’ll find out next week when Drew Brees comes to town.
- Didn’t understand the point of the excessive celebration penalty. A deliberate 15 yard penalty for what appeared to be a disorganized celebration, I didn’t get it.
- Kevin Kolb? Meh…
- Jeremy Maclin?
So those are my thoughts. This game certainly got me excited, but I’m going to wait until I we get a couple division games under our belt before I start thinking Super Bowl or anything crazy like that.
What did you guys think?
I’ll happily eat my words – that was a great game. Julius Peppers and Co. didn’t create as much havoc as I thought they would. I came away very impressed by the O-line. We really did run the ball well between B-West, Shady and the wildcat packages. We had so much speed on the field that Donovan didn’t have to create too much which should allow him to play better.
The D looked amazing today and like you said we’ll see how much of that was the Panthers fault. Next week we face a top 5 QB in the league that should give us a good idea of how good our D is. They didn’t really have an elite TE either to expose our LBs. So we’ll see how the LBs hold up against better TEs.
If Kolb is going next week – the O-line is going to have to be huge because our run game is going to have to score AND keep Brees and Co. off the field.
I was right in saying I just did not think Delhomme was good enough to beat us…I think the defense played great but i’m looking forward to seeing if that was just a result of playing Delhomme or if they are that good. Probably somewhere in between….
Sheldon Brown’s first interception was spectacular. I still don’t know how he managed to keep that ball off the turf. Yesterday was a very encouraging and inspiring start to the season. Watching the Panther’s punter try to tackle Jackson in that TD return was great. By the time he squared up Desean just ran right past him. He didn’t even have to fake him out, just ran right past him.
not to sound ungrateful but i hate games like this; no one knows if the Eagles are studs or the Panthers just suck. the defense had better look like that when Air Vice Marshall Brees comes into town with his crew.
The Eagles signed Jeff Garcia for insurance! Great to have him back!
wonder how this affects the Michael Vick situation