Eagles / Ravens Re-cap

Well, put this in the category of an ugly first-half win for the starters.  We saw (a few) good things and (many) bad things.  But this was a good football team the Eagles played tonight.  The Ravens look to have another top five defense, and the combination of a healthy Steve McNair and a revitalized Jamal Lewis is going to be tough for a lot of teams to handle.   

McNair absolutely turns these guys into a playoff team, as long as he's healthy.  Everyone's talking about the strength of the NFC East, but the AFC North is going to be a dogfight between the Ravens, Steelers and Bengals.  Not so much the Browns. 

Let's break down tonight's ugliness by half and unit:

First Half

Defense.  Sigh.  Here we go again.  Complete lack of discipline in the run game.  We had safeties running past ball carriers, linebackers getting caught in the trash inside, defensive tackles (actually, just Rayburn) getting moved off the point of attack and opening up running lanes.  Jim Johnson is not going to be in a good mood in practice this week. 

On the plus side, the line looked pretty good on passing plays.  McNair didn't have a great deal of time back there -- but had no problem keeping the chains moving because on every play there seemed to be at least one receiver running wide open.  No matter what combination of linebackers and DBs we had out there, the coverage just didn't look good.  Dawkins was flying around like a madman, though.  He's in mid-season form.

Bottom line, the Ravens put up 192 yards of offense and held the ball for almost 21 minutes in the first half.  That ain't good.

Offense.  This unit was a bit tough to evaluate.  The camera guys for this game were awful -- like high-school-game bad -- so it was hard on a lot of plays to get a real sense of what was happening on the field. 

McNabb looked good, but he also looked like a guy who wasn't seeing many open receivers.  Given our issues there, that's not comforting.  What's happened to Reggie Brown?  One catch for five yards?  No catches for Hank Baskett. Or Greg Lewis or Darnerian McCants. 

Our running backs would look good if they COULD HANG ON TO THE #$^%@! FOOTBALL.  I have to admit, Buckhalter looked much better than I ever thought we'd see him again.  He might actually be able to help us this year if he can stay healthy (knock on wood).  The other guys need to stop putting the ball on the ground. 

Speaking of fumblers, L.J. looked good.  He could catch 80 balls this year. 

Special Teams.  In both halves, our special teams look ragged, starting on the opening kickoff.  The timing was off with the guys forming the wall, so J.R. Reed was basically already standing behind them by the time they got moving.  Coverage wasn't great either.  The two bright spots were our kicker and punter, though Dirk didn't get that much work since our offense kept thoughtfully turning the ball back over to the Ravens.

Second Half

Defense.  The Eagles' second-team D-line absolutely dominated the Ravens' backup O-line.  It's ridiculous how much talent we have stashed on that line.  The rest of the backups looked decent to crappy, depending upon the play.  You also have to control for the Kyle Boller effect. 

(This week's Brodrick Bunkley highlight came on the second play of the second half, when he drove his blocker all the way into Boller, knocking him down.  Of course, he got the pass off first and completed it, but it was still an impressive play.)

Offense.  Moats is very, very fast.  Once he gets comfortable (like when he doesn't stop his flat route when the d-lineman jumps him so Detmer has to just chuck the ball over his head) he's going to be a big help.  However, a week or so ago I was talking to a friend of mine who played football against him in high school and he said he had fumbling issues back then, too. 

The rest of the offense ... let's just hope we're not seeing too much of some of those guys this year.

Specia--ehhhh, why bother...

Random Thoughts

• No-huddle offense still needs work.  I like doing things to keep base defensive personnel on the field, though.  Makes it harder to match up the right defenders against Westbrook.
• No way we cut Juqua Thomas after this performance.  That means we're keeping five defensive ends ... can we also keep five DTs?  If not, sure would love to alchemize one of those guys into a receiver.
• Greg Lewis almost looks like a guy who's trying to get cut. 
• I don't know if Timmy Chang is the answer, but do we honestly think we could win a game with the Koy Detmer of 2006 starting for us this year?  If Chang's receivers had any hands at all, he would have put some points up in the 4th quarter.
• So when a backup kick returner is tackled from behind by a fourth-string cornerback, they call the horse-collar penalty.  When our all-Pro quarterback is running towards the sideline and gets dragged down from behind by a DE/OLB, that's fine.  OK, got it.  Great rule. 
• Why does Omar Gaither, a backup MLB, wear number 96?  And speaking of Gaither, he looks like a player.  Since he played OLB in college, and we're set at MLB with Trotter, I wonder why we moved him inside behind Trotter rather than letting him take a shot at one of the outside positions where we sorta need some help...
• Why no carries for Tapeh?  I think we could use a guy like that as our change-of-pace back (which in our case means bigger and slower, rather than smaller and quicker).
• That Jeremy Bloom pick has worked out well so far.  I hope we can at least IR him and give him a year to see if he can rebuild a football body. 

Next up: Steelers.  Now that's going to be a good test.