Saturday, October 9, 2010

NFC East: Week 4 Round Up


by: Autumn Arnett Jones

It was supposed to be the match-up of the week: Redskins @ Eagles, McNabb’s return to Philly, two of the decade’s most prolific quarterbacks struggling to redeem themselves in an exciting NFC East face-off.
What transpired instead was much less epic.  McNabb did not get booed as many predicted (and maybe hoped?).  Instead, Philly fans gave him a standing ovation when he was introduced for the Redskins.  Shocked?  As blunt as they can be, there is no arguing the five NFC East titles and one Superbowl appearance McNabb led the squad to in his 11 years in green and black. 

Here’s what was interesting: the Redskins’ defensive line learned how to hit. Hard. Mike Vick fell victim to the Redskins’ improvements and went out with a rib injury in the first quarter.  So much for the Monday morning storyline.  Enter Kevin Kolb, and the Eagles would struggle both offensively and defensively for the remainder of the game, making the last three and a half quarters painful even for Skins fans.  In the end, the Skins pulled out a sloppy win to sit atop the conference, but the team still has a lot of work to do if they’d like to remain in the number one spot. 

The Giants, Eagles, and Redskins all boast (if one could be so liberal as to say a .500 record is worth boasting) 2-2 records, and the Skins’ offense is shaky.  They made the offensive line improvements everyone cried for and traded their young, nimble quarterback for a seasoned veteran in McNabb.   In the short-run, it wasn’t a bad idea.  McNabb is a good quarterback and may have another good year or two left in him.  A better offensive plan, however, would have been keeping Jason Campbell and having both in rotation.  McNabb as #2 on the depth chart – and not only to be used if Campbell got hurt as Philly did with McNabb, but to add an additional threat to the Redskins’ offense -- might have been awesome. 

Jason Campbell consistently posted respectable stats with no protection from the O-line.  And no matter how many times he got sacked, the boy got back up and took another snap without so much as a grumble.  But now, because the team didn’t make it to the playoffs in the three years Campbell led, he’s been traded to Siberia, er, excuse me, Oakland.  The difficulty is Mike Shanahan seems not to have noticed that McNabb is injury-prone.  Even with decent blocking by the line, he is still guaranteed to go down by week 8 every season.  Relying on Rex Grossman to lead an offense is like relying on Kevin Kolb.  It’s all bad from there.
At the rate they’re going, the Redskins and Eagles will again both be relegated to NFC East bottom-dwelling. 
I’m just saying….




Autumn Arnett Jones is a journalist trying to figure out what’s next as the industry continues to evolve and traditional print media is phased out. She was the first female sports editor of Morehouse's Maroon Tiger, and has two awesome children who she's grooming to be Eagles/Lakers/Nationals/Longhorns fans, much to the dismay of her husband and father.  

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