(ThatKidInTheCorner :: Birds Post Mortem, Part One)

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January 13, 2006

Birds Post Mortem, Part One

Most craptastic season since Ray Rhodes

We are now officially a week and change removed from the last Andy Reid press conference of the 2005 season. I’ve had some time to reflect. Or, more succinctly, I've had some time to reflect on life without full-bore Eagles coverage on the Internet every morning. Sigh. No more multimedia on philadelphiaeagles.com. No more beat writers filing daily stories (for at least a couple more months). And no more real football until next September. Ugh. Double ugh.

In terms of wins and losses, this season was perhaps best described as craptastic. The Birds only won 6 games, and lost (gasp!) 10. For a team that folks might thought make it back to the Super Bowl (and certainly back to the playoffs), this was, ahem, something of a bummer.

One might argue that some of those 10 losses were tough breaks, close games, whatever. The Birds did get unlucky with some bounces this year – certainly less lucky than they’ve been the past couple years. But if you’re going to whine about how the Eagles lost some close ones, you must acknowledge that they actually stole a couple as well. The Kansas City game? Should have been a loss were it not for the utter gutlessness of the KC defense. And the San Diego game? Poor San Diego. Were it not for a BLOCKED FIELD GOAL they might have grabbed a spot in the AFC playoffs and actually beaten someone. Sorry Chargers!

But no, none of that happened. The Birds went 6-10, didn’t win a single game in the division, and generally played with like the folks running the team had decided to concede the 2005 season after Week 10 (which, of course, they did). Once 5 packed up, Tra Thomas soon followed and Westbrook, and – Kersplat! -- suddenly you’re trotting out an offense with exactly two guys who were projected to be starters in training camp. Turns out there’s a reason that Greg Lewis was undrafted – he’s a third receiver at best. LJ Smith looked lovely catching short TD passes from 5 in September and October, but once there wasn’t a Pro Bowler throwing him the ball, he sure seemed to disappear. The offensive line was undisciplined and confused; if these guys are mostly veterans, why did they seem so confused by the blitz, especially early in the season – before they started to get hurt. The killer with the offense was that it did have some moments that were spectacular – where the team looked like the 2004 Eagles. Mostly those were the games where TO played and 5 wasn’t as hurt. Sigh. What might have been. Double sigh.

Injuries don’t excuse the craptastically indifferent effort by the defense, which managed to do something that the Eagles hadn’t done in a long long time – give up a ton of big plays in the passing game. This wasn’t the Birds D we’d fretted about from years past – soft on the run, but great in the red zone and dominant against the pass. Nope. These guys got no pass rush, which led to more time for QBs to find liberated receivers deep in the secondary. The secondary – the folks who sent 3 of 4 starters to the Pro Bowl last year, and a decent argument could have been made for a fourth – seemed to be a step late all season. The Eagles actually weren’t bad against the run; they just couldn’t stop the pass. And they sure couldn’t get to the quarterback. At all: the team had 47 sacks in 2004 but only 29 sacks in 2005.

Special teams were generally craptastic as well. The following people were involved in the kicking game for the Eagles this year: David Akers, Mark Simoneau, Todd France, Jose Cortez, Dirk Johnson, Sean Landeta, Nick Murphy, and Reggie Hodges. That's not awesome and does not "build consistency."

6-10. Not so sweet.

In Part 2: The Coach, The Legal Team, and the Dirty Little Secret....

Posted by thatkid at January 13, 2006 12:16 PM under Philly , Sports