A Character Win

The Season is just three weeks old and already the Eagles have played three of those games that good teams play.

The first week's demolition of the Rams was the Taking Care of Business Game.  Bad team, home game, Eagles dominated the way they needed to.

Last week against Dallas, we saw the Good Loss.  Up-and-coming team plays a hard-fought struggle against the class of the league, comes up a bit short, but proves it belongs in the conversation.

Today ... well, today we saw the Character Win.  The Eagles had every reason to fold in this game.  Tough, AFC opponent.  Short week to prepare.  Injuries to key performers like Westbrook, McNabb (for awhile), Andrews and the guys who were already hurt. 

This is a game that the Eagles teams of the last few years would have found a way to lose.  A missed field goal.  That final killer turnover.  Maybe the true gut punch -- the end of game "we can't get off the field" drive. 

But not this team.  The defense today was nothing short of dominating.  If they played somewhat passively against the Cowboys, today they attacked, attacked, attacked. 

Roethlisberger was shot by half time.  You could see the look in his eyes.  The way he lost faith in his linemen to keep him clean.  The Eagles defense destroyed his will.

Tonight and tomorrow, everyone's going to say that this game suggests the Eagles' defense has reclaimed the form of earlier this decade.  That may be true.  But today's effort reminded me far more of those truly dominating teams back in the late 80, early 90s that made pummelling the quarterback, the first, second and third priority and figured everything else would take care of itself.

A word about Brian Dawkins before we get to some other, darker subjects.  What a warrior.  That last, flying leap of a sack -- which could only have come from Dawk -- was the play that finally iced a game that was still within reach.  Seven tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and what I am guessing was one impassioned pre-game speech to his defensive teammates ...  Yeah, let's keep this guy around a little longer.

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And now, the scary parts:

• No word on this point re: the severity of Westbrook's injury.
• On the Eagles' first two drives, they managed 129 yards of offense and looked like they could  move at will.  From that point on, Philadelphia managed only 131 more yards.  Westbrook went out in the middle of the second drive, but once Pittsburgh realized he was done, things changed rapidly for this Eagles' offense.
• Tony Hunt took a vicious helmet-to-helmet shot on the play that knocked him out of the game, but that's two in a row he's started and not finished.
• Reggie Brown still looks nothing close to full speed.

Without Westbrook, this offense still isn't scaring anyone.  And a pretty good defense is coming to town next week.

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Reed making that 53-yard field goal -- his career long -- after CBS showed the "1/4 since 2005 on kicks over 50 yards" graphics was the least surprising thing I've ever seen.  No one misses kicks against the Eagles.

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Finally, and I put this here because I didn't want to end on a bad note, how f-ing good is Sav Rocca?  With all due credit to the work of the defense, Rocca's 64, 54 and 37 (down to the 7) yard punts in the 4th quarter were the Eagles offense.  If he doesn't flip the field position and pin the Steelers deep, there's no safety, no free kick, and maybe no gimme field goal. 

Game ball to the punter, in this one.