What went wrong against the Raiders

While I'm still not over the Eagles stunning loss to the Oakland Raiders, I finally had the courage to take a look back to try and figure out what went so horribly wrong with this game. There were some obvious factors that may have contributed to this loss. First, the Birds had to travel cross country and may have still be suffering from some jet lag. Second, they may have got caught reading their own press clippings after wins over the 0-6 Buccaneers and the 1-5 Chiefs. Or finally, maybe this was their designated one game a year that they throw away against a vastly inferior opponent. Whatever the case I knew I had to dig deeper to get better answers than these.

I first started with the defense to see if their effort was the primary cause of this loss. Given the fact that the held the Raiders to 13 points, and only 3 in the second half it hardly would seem to be their fault. Granted, they did give up one huge pass play in the first quarter when Raider QB JaMarcus Russell hit TE Zach Miller for an 86 yrad touchdown that should have been no more than a 15 yard gain if Jeramiah Trotter would have made the tackle, but from that point they basically shut Oakland's offense down.

Special Teams have sometimes been the culprit in these types of losses, but there was nothing that stood out that would let me pin this mess on them. David Akers did miss two field goals which would have probably been enough points to win this game, so I guess you could blame him, but there is no way this game should have come down to that so I am letting him off the hook.

Then I turned to the offense and sudddenly it all became very clear why the Eagles lost this game; a poor game plan coupled with poor execution. First the game plan; the Raiders came into this game ranked 31st against the run and 15th against the pass, yet Andy Reid decided to throw the ball 46 times and run it 14. When they did run the ball, they averaged 4.8 yards per carry but I guess that wasn't good enough so they completetly abandoned it and threw the ball almost every chance they could. Now lets take a look at the offensive execution. I do not want to place the bulk of the blame on Donovan McNabb, but his 22 completions on 46 attempts adds up to a 48% completion percentage which is only slightly better than Russells was for the entire season. It certainly didn't help when LT Jason Peters left the game with a knee injury, as McNabb was sacked six times with him out of the lineup. You would think that would give you even more reason to run the ball in a game that you never trailed by more than a touchdown.

We have all seen games like this in the past from Reid and Co. where you just have to sit back and scratch your head as you swear the coaches in the box are watching a completely different game than you. You would think if a bunch of sterno bum fans like us could figure this out, the guys that get paid big bucks would be able to as well.

It is on to the Redskins on Monday night and the good news is they have far more problems that the Eagles do. Something tells me we will see a much more balanced offensive attack against Washington as losses like this have a way of forcing you to get back to basics.