Chargers Video Rewind

All things end badly, else they wouldn't end, which is why we know the end of the McNabb era will be bitter, ugly and leave fans just as divided about him as they were when he played here.

Real Eagles fans have always known that McNabb had more support around town than the national talking heads would have you believe.  Whether you considered this an annoyance or a credit to the perceptiveness of your fellow fans depended greatly upon where you, yourself, stood.

Lately, though, we've started to see an erosion in McNabb's base of support.  It hasn't been an obvious shift.  If you're not attuned to the collective mood of the fanbase, I'm not sure you'd even have noticed.  But we're starting to see subtle indicators, like Lawlor saying McNabb "seems to have lost his mojo."  Or the fact that on a day when the Eagles called 58 pass plays and only 13 runs, many people seem willing to let the playcallers off the hook and go straight to the part where they start blaming McNabb.

This is all Kevin Kolb's fault, of course.  If he'd stunk up the joint during his extended audition earlier this season, this wouldn't be happening.  Oh, the people who blame every loss on McNabb would still be on his case, but the rest of us would be perfectly happy going home to McNabb every night, sharing a nice dinner and watching a little TV.

If only he hadn't looked so good.  And young, too.  He just seems so much less complicated, you know?

If this is to be McNabb's last year in green, I hope he goes down fighting.  None of that bite your tongue and then go complain to Bob Costas crap.  This is McNabb's team now.  There's literally no one else left who can lead it.  They're all gone, or worse, old and injured.

So when the offensive coordinator keeps dialing up stupid playcalls in the red zone, yes, this is what I want to see McNabb do:

Indeed.  Run the damn football, Marty.

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A lot of people have asked me to focus on the red zone issues this week.  Honestly, I wasn't going to, but you know, since you asked and all ...

The Eagles had four "and 1" red zone situations in this game.  These were the playcalls:

 

Notice anything odd about those calls?  The first three were all in the first half ... and Brian Westbrook wasn't injured until the third quarter ... and yet we ... never ... gave ... Westbrook ... the ball.

You know, Westbrook.  The guy who's third all-time on the Eagles' touchdown list.  The only running back who makes our line look halfway decent.

And yeah, McNabb missed the throw to Celek and Buckley probably scored, but I guarantee if they'd just handed the ball to Westbrook three times, they wouldn't have been 0-for-3.

Maddening.

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Let's look at those early series a bit more closely, though.  Here's the first one:

Not a bad play by McNabb, because Maclin had his man beaten and Jammer had to grab his arm to stop him.  With that said, the second that safety up top drops down into the box on the play action, DeSean Jackson is going to be open -- and he was:

If there was one criticism I'd level against McNabb in the red zone it was that he seemed to stick with his pre-snap read a bit too long on a couple plays.  That's how he got into trouble later on that near INT to Celek.

Just no push whatsoever by the offensive line.  They tried to get leverage down low, went nowhere, and the linebackers hurdled the line to stone Weaver.  GCobb's right.

 

McNabb missed this one, which isn't in and of itself all that interesting, but watch the guy who starts out next to Celek:

Ironic that the one time all year he's able to block someone, it stops him from running his route quickly enough.

I actually liked this call.  If you're not going to use Westbrook, by all means use Buckley, since the guy has shown a real desire to hit the ball up inside hard and fast.  I even think Buckley scored on this play, but the problem was that he lost the ball at some point on the bottom of the pile.  So when the refs ran up to to get a better look at whether or not he was in the end zone, the ball was in the hands of a Charger on about the five-yard line.  There's no way they're calling that a touchdown at that point.

Hang on to the ball, score against your old team.  Easy as that.

The second red zone series was just sort of bad all over:

I think it's fair to blame McNabb for the first down play, since Westbrook popped open at the top of the screen and if he's on the field, you probably want to keep him in mind. 

The second down play just demonstrated once again how poorly we run block in critical situation.

Third down is on the coaches.  This was the play where they put Jackson and Maclin on the same side of the field up top, and then kept Avant and Celek in to block on the bottom:

I think the idea behind this play was that the defense would lose track of Avant and/or Celek when they stayed in pass protection, so you could then slip them out and try to sneak one across.  If that's true, it means Marty Mornhinweg believes the Eagles can't score from the nine-yard line without tricking a defense that (you'll notice above) is just playing a straight zone across the field and isn't likely to miss someone.

Third red zone series (second half now, and Westbrook is out):

The first down throw wasn't a bad one by McNabb.  Celek was running an in-breaking route towards the safety and McNabb back-shouldered him.  The next time McNabb puts the ball there, Celek will catch it.

The second down play was just a nice completion to Avant.  McNabb was really locked in at this point.

Third down was when things got ugly.  This was the playcall everyone hated even before they ran it.  It's a crummy replay, because Fox was slow getting back to the action, but pre-snap they lined Avant up in the backfield, then motioned him out quickly to try to get him a favorable match-up.  Then McNabb rolled right, Avant was actually covered quite well by a safety and DeSean didn't complete his route, as explained by Billick during the broadcast. 

It was after this play that McNabb let the sideline have it:

On their next two red zone series, the Eagles scored touchdowns off of McNabb passes.  But I do want to point out one more thing:

Six plays, five passes.  And where did that run come from?  McNabb audibled to it.

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Let's continue yesterday's criticism of the defensive gameplan with some video evidence.  Play #1:

Yes, Gocong blew the coverage.  Bad job by him.  But this is what happens when you play guys out of position.  For three years, Gocong has been covering tight ends.  Now all of a sudden he has the fullback.  One short mental lapse combined with a block-and-release against the Mikell blitz, and there's no way for him to recover.

Here's another one, this time with Witherspoon.  Watch the shift that occurs when the tight end crosses the formation.  Gocong, Fokou and Cole (on the left) all shift their alignments.  But Witherspoon barely moves, even after Rivers adjusts the play and Gocong tells him to get outside (you can see his arm in the video).  Sort of predictable what happens next:

Here's just a flat-out bad playcall.  This is simply not something you can run against Antonio Gates:

Lastly, I have no idea what was going on with this one (click for full size):

Notice that no one's covering the slot receiver on the bottom.  Quintin Mikell sees this and so races down there to pick him up. On the other side of the formation we have both linebackers and a cornerback all bunched up on the same couple guys.  That can't be right. 

You're practically begging the Chargers to run a weak-side draw with this formation, but they kept the pass on.  And the three Eagles defenders in a bunch provided a most effective screen for the receiver Asante Samuel is attempting to cover.

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Speaking of which, this is one of the stupidest things I've read all season: "At the endgame, the Bolts led 28-23 and faced third-and-2 with 2:45 remaining. Samuel fell down as Naanee made the catch -- and then simply laid there on his tummy-tum-tum, making no attempt to get up, watching his man run to the Philadelphia 15 and put the Bolts in position for the game-icing field goal." 

Yes, Asante fell down and no, he didn't get up all that quickly, but his receiver was 10 yards away from him before he could even think about getting off the turf.  If you're going to criticize him, do it for the missed tackles, like the one on the play where Fokou ended up getting the 15-yard roughing penalty. 

Although I will say that Asante looked a bit more physical this week when they attacked him.  He even got his own licks in:

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In general, the Eagles just didn't look like a well-coached team.  They're still struggling with the Wildcat:

It's impossible to criticize any one person, because who can even tell who was supposed to have contain on that end. 

Then there was this beauty.  Watch the way Avant motions from right to left ... bringing his defender into position to mess with the all the backfield action ... and then forgetting to block him:

Maclin didn't help things by freezing back there.

And of course we're still missing pick-ups:

Sigh.

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Here's one of those bitter points we typically forget about after games that aren't this rage-inducing to re-watch:

Reid was forced to use a time-out midway through the third quarter Sunday, and he argued to no avail with the officials that they reset the play clock too quickly after a 58-yard pass from Donovan McNabb to Jason Avant.

"I know the play went in on time," Reid said. "Donovan called it on time. And when we got to the line, there was no time. I encouraged [referee Jerome Boger] to recheck the clock. I'm not in charge of the clock."

Nope.  Refs got it right.  Timed it.  Almost 39 seconds from when they blew the whistle to when Donovan called timeout to save a penalty.

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So, in the fourth quarter, the Eagles finally flipped Cole and Parker back to their usual sides.  That series:  two-yard gain, sack by Parker, and then an illegal formation penalty by the LT who was cheating to get back on Cole.

Yeah, probably would have been better to keep those guys in place.

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Definitely bash the defense for blowing yet another "get the other team off the field" fourth quarter opportunity, but you also have to give San Diego credit for coming out throwing when a lot of teams would have just done pound-pound-pound-punt. 

The Chargers actually passed on their first five -- and six of their first eight -- plays on that final drive, before running LDT into the line three times to bleed the clock. 

Marty Schottenheimer wouldn't have done that.

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Other thoughts:

• The defensive tackles didn't look as good in this game, and I don't just mean Bunk and Patterson.  Dixon got absolutely blown up by a double team in his first series, in a way we haven't seen much of this year.  You have to wonder if back-to-back games against the New York and Dallas lines took their toll a bit.  Trevor Laws need to step up and contribute from here on out.
• Jeremy Maclin is not an NFL kick returner right now.  It looks like he's going to get broken in half when he's out there.  What say instead we use the guy who has the team's best average on kick returns (on, admittedly, two kicks).
• This is going to sound nuts, but if Kevin Curtis really isn't coming back any time soon, we need to keep giving Reggie Brown chances to contribute.  I know, I know, but he's been there in a way the kids haven't been.  He looks pretty good right now, too.  No more deep routes, though.
• Speaking of which, on the deep ball to Reggie where he was triple-covered, that came right after the botched reverse in which Maclin ran around for awile and got leveled.  It's at least possible that the play was called thinking Maclin would be in that spot instead of Reggie, but he subbed out.
• Want to know why the Wildcat works better for other teams?  It's 'cause they can run-block.
• McCoy got the "straight ahead" message before this game.  Even the third-and-two play he ended up bouncing outside, I'm not sure I saw much room inside with the crappy blocking he was getting.  Also, that was a draw.  More "trickery."
• I thought the Maclin pushoff was a good call.  I thought the Sheldon pushedoff was an equally obvious foul.
• The offense looked best in this game when McNabb was operating out of the shotgun, taking three step drops from there, and hitting his first read.  If we could combine that with a situationally effective running game, we'd have something.
• Mike Scifres punted four times for a net of 46.8 yards, including a 61-yarder that pinned the Eagles at the five.  Sav Rocca punted four times for a net of 36.8 yards, including a 30-yard shank that set the Chargers up for their first touchdown.
• On the LDT 20-yard touchdown run, the Chargers had their fullback run past everyone in the box so he could go block our safety.  That's how badly their big boys were whipping us on those plays.  The linebackers looked like they were just catching blockers all day.
• Are you all (cough, Sam, cough) now willing to concede that finding back-up corners who can actually cover people -- rather than just play on special teams -- is probably pretty smart?