Eagles Euphoria

My friend PK sent me the following email after the Eagles beat the Ravens.

"January can't come fast enough." That was how Jeff [my brother] summed up the Birds situation in a message last night. Very true.Let's face it, the Eagles have been around since, what, the 1920s.We've never been 7-0. Never. Not once. Never.Until now, we're 7-0 now. 7-0.

OK, we're going to lose somewhere along the schedule here, and I predicted two weeks ago that it would happen in Pittsburgh, a "trap door" game because we'd be looking ahead to the Cowboys the following week on MNF.

Well, having looked through the entire schedule the rest of the way, there is NO WAY the Eagles should get caught looking past the Steelers.This is The Game of the Year, a possible Super Bowl match-up, the toughest team on the schedule at this point. Throw in the fact that the Steelers played above themselves today in beating the Pats, they might be headed for the letdown game, not us.Christ, we were in complete control of that game today against the Ravens and yet somehow they came out statistically ahead of us in everything, total yards, rushing yards, time of possession. Not sure how that happened.

A couple things that concern me, beyond the obvious thing (Westbrook's health):* we seem to have come down with a case of the not-quite-able-to-punch-it-in-the-end-zone-itis. Drives that just don't get finished off and instead we get an Akers field goal. If TO doesn't make that incredible move for the lone td today, that would have been another Akers field goal.*

D-backs. Lito and Brown have played OK this season, but I still have concerns about them in a really big game, big situation, against someone like Favre. In previous years, with all-pro corners who could go man-to-man without any worries, Jim Johnson could load up B-Dawk and the other safeties and the l-backers to stamp out the running game. He's still doing that to some extent now -- Dawkins and Lewis were the leaders in tackles today -- but it scares me to leave Lito over-exposed, which is exactly what happened on that heave by boller that led to the ravens lone td.those two things aside, holy crap, why not us? If Westbrook can come back healthy and play the rest of the season, we're looking seriously great. With two games against the Cowboys and two against the Skins, as well as a season finale against Cincy, that's basically five wins in the bag right there. There are only four other games against teams that should have a chance at beating us.And we're basically three games ahead of hte NFC field, given that the Giants and Vikes have two losses each and we beat them so we hold a tie-breaker over them.Another huge concern could well be getting to something like 12-1 and having home field wrapped up in early December and then not playing meaningful football for another month or so.

The emerging MLB theory is that wild cards win the World Series so often because they scratch and claw all the way down to the last weekend of the season while division winners often have huge leads and coast down the stretch.I sure hope that we don't do something like 14-2 or 15-1 only to lose our zing down the stretch.