Bring On The Rematch

All right, they won the first one.  That sucked, but the chances were there.

Here's the thing.  After the Eagles crushed the Rams, we had no idea what kind of team they were.  The Rams suck, the Eagles got rolling and those things just happen in the first week of the season.

But after this Dallas game -- a game the Eagles played without both starting wide receivers, a big LDE who would really have come in handy, and Shawn Andrews for much of the time -- we now know, this team is legit. 

That's going to be a hard loss to swallow.  I have no idea what McNabb was thinking on that botched handoff to Westbrook.  Seems like one of those plays you run a million times and shouldn't have problems with it.

I'd remind folks, however, that Romo had his own set of baffling mistakes in this game.  They'll quickly be forgotten, of course, since his team won, but those things happen.  Sadly, this one went a long way towards costing our guys this game.

The one real negative about the effort tonight was the defense.  Of course, Dallas has some playmakers.  We weren't going to shut them out.  But the variety of big plays and blown coverages just really wasn't something we wanted to see.  Especially because once the Eagles got burned a few times, Jim Johnson seemed to tighten up out there.  Rather than sending the house to help out a game front four that wasn't getting pressure, he kept playing coverages, desperate to find something that would stop the bleeding. 

Nothing did. 

The big key right now for the team (and the fans) is going to be putting this game behind us quickly.  We've got Pittsburgh coming to the Linc next week, and inasmuch as Dallas is (for now) the class of the NFC, the Steelers looks like they might be the best team the AFC has to offer.  The players are going to have to quickly get over a bruising, deflating loss.  Otherwise, we're gonna get wiped next week.  The fans better show up on Sunday too.

So ... bottom line.  This loss sucks.  I'm feeling surprisingly rational about the whole thing right now, but I'm not going to want to get out of bed tomorrow. 

Here's the thing, though.  We just lost the first game we played against Dallas. 

Now we need to win the next two.