I took heat from a lot of Ealges fans earlier in the week for posting on the teams message board that Brian Westbrook should be returning punts.
The consistent argument seemed to be that doing so was too much of an injury risk. I asked for examples of punt returners getting hurt and then heard the crickets chirping.
Westbrook watched on the sidelines as the Ealges play on special teams cost them the game.
On his first ever punt return, Greg Lewis muffed a punt that led to an early Green Bay touchdown. On a play where he should have called a fair catch, Lewis was nailed as he attempted to catch the ball. The ball was kicked and bobbled into the endzone, where Green Bay recovered the fumble.
Lewis almost dropped another punt later in the game, so Andy Reid decided to put JR Reed back there with 59 seconds left and the game tied.
Big mistake.
Reed, who called for a fair catch, misjudged the ball and dove forward to catch the ball. He dropped it, leading to a winning field goal by Green Bay.
So many questions - why would they not use Westbrook in such a critical situation? Why would they even consider Reed, who just took punts in practice this week, for the first time? What in the world are they going to do going forward?
Donovan McNabb, coming off an ACL tear that caused him to miss the end of last season, was average at best and the offense could not get anything going.
The defense played well, but lost Lito Sheppard to an injury.
The special teams is another story and a change needs to be made. Maybe they will bring Jeremy Bloom back. They might as well. At least he knows how to catch the football.
There is no going back on this one though. It was a frustrating loss. The offense is better than it played. The mistakes were bonehead mistakes.
Once again, the Eagles wasted timeouts in the third quarter. Once again, the Eagles took a ton of penalties.
It's one game. The season is not over. But things need to change.
There is no way the Eagles should be losing games because of special teams.
No comments:
Post a Comment