Once again, the Eagles found a way to win. OK, you can definitely argue that it never should have been close in the first place (although the Redskins seem to have found new life in the past few weeks), but doing well in the post-season requires being able to win close games. We’ve needed points – we’ve gotten points (that may be because we finally have some skill players on offense who actually have, you know, some skills). We’ve needed long drives to eat up the clock – we’ve gotten long drives to eat up the clock (hello, run game!). We’ve needed our nearly linebacker-less defense to make big stops – we’ve gotten big stops. We needed decent clock management – we actually got decent clock management (maybe you *can* teach an old dog new tricks).

So details: I didn’t like the onside kick decision to start the game. Not only did it not work, but it made me nervous right off the bat that Andy was going to try to get too tricky. Thankfully, that was the last of that. And we were clicking offensively early on. Our defense was pretty sorry, though, particularly in the 3rd quarter, when they could not BUY their way off the field, and our offense pretty much fell asleep on the field. We were lucky the Skins came away with only 7 points in the 3rd. Too many missed tackles, too many times we didn’t quite get to Campbell. And special teams was not brilliant either – Rocca had another bad punt, Macho couldn’t get free, and we let the Skins start with good field position far too often. Except when it counted!

The Redskins, after depriving us of Brian Westbrook about a month ago, took out two more of our top four offensive players (Peanut and Brent Celek, with DMac rounding out the quartet) – I’m just glad we’re done with them for the season, as they seem to be really, really bad for our health. Speaking of Celek, you know how he missed, like, three totally catchable balls in a row? About 5 minutes later, the camera panned to him on the sideline getting his hand taped up. Sprained thumb. To go with Peanut’s concussion.

Based on that, I’m having a hard time taking the excessive weeping and wailing about Juqua Parker’s hard sack of Jason Campbell at the end of the game all that seriously. The WaPo was all, “He was unconscious – he lost feeling in his arms – he was drumming his fingers on the ground.” Hm – last time I checked, when you’re unconscious, you’re NOT MOVING. You know, like y’all did to Westy a month ago. The last time I lost feeling in my arms, I wasn’t drumming my fingers on anything. Was it a hard take down? You bet. Flagable? Maybe. But you know what happened when we tried *gentle* take downs earlier in the game? THEY DIDN’T WORK. And Jason Campbell is not exactly Mr. Evasive.

Of course, I probably shouldn’t give the WaPo too much credit – their sportswriters were also complaining about Campbell being Mr. Checkdown and not being able to function in the West Coast offense. Um, short check down passes are THE DEFINITION of the West Coast offense. Jeez!

So we’re done with the Skins – and with November – and we’re sitting at 7-4, one game behind the Cowboys. And we’re going into December. When we play our best – and the Boys play their worst. Just hope we have enough bodies left to get us through.

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