Sports

Week 7 - Washington Redskins: Philadelphia Eagles Preview

This could be ESPN’s worst nightmare of the season.  Well, so far at least.  Apropos this scariness is happening during Halloween Week.

The only people who enjoyed the Philadelphia Eagles loss to the Oakland Raiders and the Washington Redskins loss to the Kansas City Chiefs less than the fans in Philadelphia and Washington - were the executives at ESPN. Why? Because the Eagles and Redskins are on Monday Night Football this week.

What a dog of a game this one is going to be. The Eagles three wins came against teams with a combined 3-17 record, while the Redskins are the first team in the history of the NFL to play their first six games in a row against a team without a win. Their record is only 2-3. These are two bad teams.

To make make matters even worse, both teams have good defenses. That might be more of a reflection of the level of competition than how good these two defense are, but the Eagles are ranked 4th overall and the Redskins are ranked 6th overall. That might be good in football terms, but it’s sure to be a ratings disaster for ESPN.

After the loss to the Chiefs, head coach Jim Zorn was stripped of his play-calling duties. That job has now been given to Sherm Lewis, who was calling bingo numbers at a retirement home two weeks ago. Nothing against Sherm Lewis, who was a fine offensive coordinator in his day, but his day has passed. Interestingly enough, his last job was as the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions in 2004, when current offensive coordinator, Marty Mornhinweg was the head coach. How the hell is Lewis supposed to call plays when he doesn’t know the strengths and weaknesses of his personnel and probably isn’t even that familiar with the entire playbook. How could he be familiar with the playbook? It’s not his offense and he just got there. This kind of stupidity could only happen under Daniel Snyder. OK, Jerry Jones could do something this stupid as well. Sherm Lewis calling the plays two weeks after calling bingo is a recipe for disaster.

The Redskins are sticking with Jason Campbell at QB, even though the offense is ranked 23rd overall in the NFL. (It was all Jim Zorn’s fault, remember?) This is the Eagles best hope for a victory. Campbell simply stinks. Campbell has proven with his play that he is not a starting NFL QB, yet somehow he is 3-2 in his career against the Eagles. His overall crapiness has a negative effect on his average-at-best WRs. The Redskins best offensive weapon is TE Chris Cooley. If Lewis has any sense at all, he’ll throw the ball to Cooley all day against the Eagles, since their linebackers can’t cover anybody. The already shaky offensive line took a major hit when LT Chris Samuels was lost for the year. That, in turn, will effect how well RB Clinton Portis can run the ball with his own calf injury.

The Eagles defense is better at defending the pass, but again, when you’re facing guys like Josh Johnson, Jake Delhomme, Matt Cassell and Jamarcus Russell, you have to try not to be a top pass defense. The Redskins will most likely try to establish the run with Portis and throw to Cooley to take advantage of the Eagles LBs. As dumb as bringing a coach out of retirement and turning your offense over to him within two weeks may be, how about signing a MLB, who hasn’t played in two years, out of retirement and putting him in the starting lineup? The Eagles did that with Jeremiah Trotter, which tells you how bad their LB play has been this season. He was the one who let Zach Miller score the only TD in the loss against the Raiders. The Eagles are so desperate now that they traded for Will Witherspoon, who will start against the Redskins. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with that? Campbell and the Redskins WRs will get shut down by the Eagles D-backs, but that’s nothing new. I predict that ESPN Color Commentator, Ron Jaworski, compares Asante Samuel’s aversion to tackling to that of Deion Sanders at least once.

The Eagles offense might be ranked 12th overall in the NFL, but that isn’t a fair picture of the offense. They have played some terrible defenses and had one game where they were piling up meaningless stats playing catchup against the Saints. Plus, the best offensive performances this year came in the games when Kevin Kolb was starting at QB for an injured Donovan McNabb. McNabb couldn’t have looked much worse against the Raiders last week. Of course, he had lots of help in that loss.

The offensive line of the Eagles is getting a few starters back this week in LT Jason Peters and LG Todd Herremans. Well see how healthy both are, but they have to be an upgrade over the slop that the Eagles had out there last week on the O-line. No QB can be effective when he’s getting hit on every throw.

Normally, I would say that the Eagles can exploit the Redskins inability to stop the run, but who the hell are we kidding here? Andy Reid doesn’t believe in running the football. Never has. Never will. Hell, the Raiders were ranked 31st against the run and Andy Reid only called 12 running plays, while airing it out on 54 passing plays last week. The Raiders subsequently gave up over 300 yards rushing yesterday to the Jets. The Redskins’ 22nd overall ranking against the run will definitely improve after not seeing a running play attempted against them on Monday night. I hate Andy Reid.

Normally, I would say that the Redskins will be out-coached in any game, but anybody who has ever seen Andy Reid in action knows that isn’t the case this week. The fat man will do something so stupid that you won’t believe your eyes. I will just be sitting there thinking “that’s our Andy”. How sad is it that I have less faith in Reid than a team with an offense that hasn’t scored more than 17 points in a game and recently brought somebody out of the bingo hall to run the offense?

I would pick this game to end in a tie, but it wouldn’t be as funny now that I’m sure even Donovan McNabb knows the overtime rules in the NFL. Right? These two teams always play close games against each other, no matter what their records are. Washington won both meetings last season though. It will be a low-scoring, boring game and I suggest that you stock up on the Red Bull to help you stay awake. I’m going to assume that the Eagles are just a bit better (less crappy) than the Redskins here and predict an Eagles victory. I wouldn’t be shocked if they lost this game after they lost to the Raiders, but the Redskins lost to the Lions for chrissakes! The Eagles have to be better than this team don’t they?

Don’t they?

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