Eagles over Texans, Thursday, December 2, 2010
Stud of the week: Michael Vick. Not only was his defense not able to hold a 14 point lead, going down by four at one point, and needing him to rally the team to a win, but he did it after getting repeatedly knocked on his ass. Much like a weeble, he kept popping back up. Thank God. Shady had a good game, too, going for 130 combined yards. Anyone else notice how much he's starting to run like BWest? Must be all those screens! Gotta give a shout out to Chef Spouse's boy David Akers, too, who set the franchise record for starts at 184 on Thursday, passing Wolverine, whose starts, let's be honest, were qualitatively different (no disrespect meant to Akers).
So, comments on the game. It's four days after, so the recaps have already hit everywhere but, um, here.
The big stories were:
Michael Vick is one tough mo-fo. Yes, he is. See above. Also, loved the whole "not in OUR house" 4th quarter come-back.
Andy Reid calls out the officials. Glad to see I'm not the only one who notices that some QBs (whose last name may be "Manning") draw 15 yard penalties if your arm glances off their helmet, while some QBs get blatantly face masked (see above, Vick, Michael) or their NOSES get BROKEN (Big Ben and the whole "my nose is now perpendicular to my face" thing on SNF) and...nothing.
Brent Celek and Jason Avant BOTH drop the same TD pass. C'mon man!
The Vick throw in the 4th quarter when we needed to keep the clock moving. I don't think that was actually a planned throw. Watching it again, the flags were already in by the time Vick threw it away. Andy is not the master of clock management, but I don't think that was him.
And the big one: the defense. OK, the third quarter was not great. But the thing is, the Texans can totes score points. I'm not thrilled that the gave up 2 TDs, but I'm not that surprised, either. It's clear that the Eagles D misses Asante Samuel big time, not least of which because no coach in his right mind wants to throw near him, which allows the rest of the defense to cheat the coverage on his side, leaving them only having to deal with about 2/3 of the field. When they have to cover the WHOLE field, things aren't so good. But again, giving up 24 points to the Texans is not beyond the pale.
4 games left, resurgent Cowboys twice, resurgent Vikings once, and the Giants in their house. The Eagles can't ever do anything the easy way, can they? Go get 'em, boys. (Doing something to reduce penalties might help.)
Get the rest of the recaps at Snarkin' the NFL.