22.5

The Eagles are 22.5 point underdogs for Sunday. My gosh 22.5 points? For a professional football game? That’s amazing. Especially since the Eagles aren’t one of the worst teams in the league. They’re not the dolphins for gosh sakes.

 

My friend writes that he thinks the Eagles could give the Patriots trouble.

 

I actually believe the Eagles can give the Pats a game because I believe the way to do it is to run at them and control the game with short passes and the occasional deep ball.  Brian Westbrook is the ideal player, much like Joseph Addai, to accomplish such a game plan.  Unfortunately, Reid is sitting in his office think he needs to score 38 to beat the Pats and that the only way to do that is to throw the ball 70 times.

 

Call me the happy optimist, but I too could weirdly see the Eagles being competitive, or I could easily envision them being blown out by 5 touchdowns. Though I would jump at giving 12.5 points to the Pats on a 3 teamer. I would be not nearly as comfortable taking the Eagles and 32.5.

 

I do think the Eagles could make a game of it. Aside from Westbrook, they have a good, veteran secondary in Lito Sheppard, Sheldon Brown, and Brian Dawkins, though Mikell sprained his knee (who himself was a replacement for Considine) so they will play JR Reed. They also have one of the better defensive coordinators in the league. Alas, the pass rush is lacking, which could be a huge problem against a veteran, precision passer like Brady.

 

As to my friend’s point about throwing 70 times. Andy Reid is thinking that he will throw 70 times cause he just loves to do it, not because he thinks he needs to score a lot of points. Oddly, given that Reid calls vastly more running plays for the backup quarterback (see Feeley 2002, Garcia 2006, and Feeley last week), would the Eagles have a better shot at beating the Pats with Feeley and a balanced offensive philosophy? Does that trump a banged up McNabb with a tweaked ankle and a jammed throwing thumb – not to mention the rehabbing ACL – especially if McNabb would be called on to throw 55 times whereas Feeley would only be asked to throw 30 times and get to hand off 30 times?

 

And finally, I do hope Reid learned his lesson from last year’s game vs. an AFC juggernaut on national TV. In that game vs. the Colts Reid called stuff like he was desperate to score points to keep pace with the Colts. Fake punt, double reverse pass, going for it on 4^th and 4 near mid field. It all blew up in his face and kept putting unneeded pressure on a weak  defense that didn’t need the extra pressure.

 

Hopefully he will play it more straight and not panic so early in this game.