(Pat Post)

It’s around 11AM on Sunday morning, so in about 2 hours, the Philadelphia football Eagles will play the Giants in an absolute must win game.  I will start this out by saying that I have absolutely no credibility, and have no business even pretending to be fair in my assessment of this game, because I am a delusional Eagles fan. 

I have been underrating the Giants and overrating the Eagles for over a season and a half now (though to be fair, this year’s Eagles  team has been treated about as unfairly by fans and media both local and national as I can ever remember a team being treated. They are 6-5-1 with 4 losses in the final minute, at least 2 of which they really should have won. I know that point can be looked at as a major negative in and of itself, but remember that they caught Dallas when they were firing on all cylinders, Washington when they hit their little 4 week peak early in the year, Chicago without Westbrook, and obviously the Giants at the top of their game, also remember they buried the Steelers and Cardinals. And when everybody wants to kill them for their short yardage game, can we at least mention the fact that they’ve been without Shawn Andrews, one of the top 2 or 3 guards in football, all year?  I don’t see how this is suddenly an embarassing season, frustrating and unlucky yes, but the idea that Andy Reid is somehow a terrible coach now is idiotic.  He coaches the same way he always has: pass happy with some questionable game management decisons, but an uncanny ability to find ways to move the ball up and down the field with unspectacular players, and you can scoff at that if you want, but even this season, they’re 6th in the league in points per game. Anyway before this becomes a 15000 word thesis inside paranthesees, I digress…).  Nonetheless, I’m going to go ahead and explain why I believe the Eagles will beat the Giants today, and perhaps expose them in their post-Plaxico infancy, because A) I  actually do truly believe this will happen, and B) the over/under on people who ever read this post is 1.5, so I really don’t have much to lose.

I will try to keep this relatively short, but rest assured, I’ve spent this entire week talking myself into the Eagles winning, so my reasoning is, at the very least, well thought out. First of all, for those who count out the Eagles based upon the Giant offense physically dominating them 4 weeks ago, I direct your attention towards the two Dallas games last year.  The Cowboys absolutely manhandled the Eagles in their first meeting in Philly, and cruised to a 12-1 record through 13 games. The Eagles, on the other hand, had been inconsistent and injury plagued all year and were just 5-8 as they headed to Dallas.  What happened? The Eagles defense absolutely dominated the Cowboys, holding them to just 7 points.  That Cowboy team would never really look the same following that game, and the Eagles would continue to look impressive in their final two meaningless games to get to .500 for the year.  So the Birds do have a history of both adjusting to a team a second time around, particularly defensively, and also playing well in the season’s stretch run.

To further this point, we can look at the 2006 season when the Eagles were left for dead at 5-6 and without McNabb for the rest of the season. What did they do? They won 5 in a row with Jeff Garcia, including road wins against all 3 other NFC East teams, and  won the division. (And for those who would argue they won because of Garcia, you are wrong, very very wrong.)

My hope is that something similar will happen this year, that it began last week against Arizona, and that it will continue this week in the Meadowlands. I realize my reference to previous seasons is essentially anecdotal evidence, but the Eagles defense does have a history of turning it on come December, and perhaps you can even look at what they did on Thanksgiving as proof they’re peaking at the right time again this year. After all, the NFL is a league of ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys, and I truly believe the Eagles have  not truly gotten hot yet, and conversely, the Giants have not really slumped.  So perhaps the converging story lines of the Giant distractions and the Eagles’ “nobody believes in us” chip on their shoulder could be the perfect storm this week.

Of course, the Plaxico Burress suspension is a huge factor in why I’m somewhat confident heading into today’s game, as he has been a thorn in the Eagles side ever since he first put on Giant blue.  I’ve heard several people devalue this factor by saying he had just one catch (a touchdown catch I might add) in that first game, but that’s very much because the Eagles are so scared of him, and they certainly hurt themselves against the run by paying so much attention to him.

The passing game will clearly suffer without Plaxico, but what I’m really counting on is the run game suffering immensely as well.  That said, the Eagles cannot and will not completely shut down Jacobs and co., but they don’t need to, they just need to keep them from winning the game with the run alone, as was essentially the case last time around.  I also think Plaxico’s absence will allow them to get more pressure on Eli which has always been a major key in stopping him. He’s a good player, better than I ever thought he’d be, but he’s not a superstar by any means. He’s made all the plays he’s had to since last December, but he can’t beat you by himself, and now he doesn’t have his security blanket.

As far as the offense goes, they did put up 31 points against this team a month ago while getting virtually nothing from Brian Westbrook, and so I see no reason to believe they cannot move the ball today. The Eagles have typically been excellent coming out of bye weeks, in fact Andy Reid is a perfect 9-0, so I think this 10 day break could be another big factor in this game. The extra days of both rest and game plan preperation could be vital, especially for the offense. 

Of course, The two keys for the offense are McNabb and Westbrook. I don’t think McNabb will revert back to how he looked against Cincy and Baltimore, but if he does, this game won’t be close. Westbrook is questionable and hasn’t practiced all week, but I suspect that’s just precautionary and that he will be in there on most plays. If he’s not, you can forget everything I’ve written, they will lose.

So I’ll cut myself off here, and say that I believe the Eagles will win this game something like 28-17.  I’m sure I forgot some other notable reasons for my confidence, but I’m doubt I’m going to talk anybody into this anyway.  Obviously, Bo, as you know, my predictions on Eagles games are virtually meaningless, but I wanted to post something and I figured this would be a topic I could really spew bullshit about. After all, why have a blog if you can’t use it to support your own delusions?