Something is definitely wrong here. It has to be. How else can you explain consecutive fourth-quarter comebacks from the Eagles in as many weeks? Or the use of a running game during a crucial moment of the game? Shocking! Somehow, someway, the Eagles overcame a long afternoon and a feisty Redskins team to win, 27-24, on Sunday thanks to a 32-yard David Akers’ goal with 1:48 left to play.
The Eagles scored 11 points in the fourth quarter to rebound from a eight-point deficit. But throughout much of the day, it didn’t look good. Philadelphia moves to 7-4 heading into Atlanta next week, its playoff hopes kept buoyant by a resuscitated offense that couldn’t do much of anything for the first three quarters.
But something happened along the way to this improbable victory. The Eagles ran the ball. And they ran it well. Philadelphia ran the ball 12 times in the fourth quarter, six on the game-winning drive that resulted in the Akers’ field goal. It goes against all of Andy Reid’s offensive thinking. This time, it worked.
“It means a lot, a whole lot that we got that trust,” said LeSean McCoy, who rushed for a game-high 76 yards, which doesn’t include his pile-driving, two-point conversion run that tied the game at 24-24. “It was great that we got the chance to make plays, and that the coaching staff has confidence in us.”
“Showing we can run the ball was very important,” Leonard Weaver said. “You might have saw me [gesturing to run the ball], but that was to tell [the coaching staff] that I know we can run that thing. I wanted to let them know we can keep doing it.”
Another plus were the two-straight scoring drives in the fourth quarter.
“There’s a stigma around the league that we can’t come back, but this shows we have the talent to come back in the fourth quarter,” Weaver said. “That establishes something around the league, and it goes to show you how much momentum plays a part in winning.”
The turning point came on successive long receptions from Donovan McNabb to Jason Avant, one for 44 yards the other for 24, helping the Eagles set up the tying score, an Eldra Buckley 1-yard plunge with 7:24 left to play.
“It’s one of the things we stressed [in the fourth quarter], get the job done,” Weaver said. “Once you start making plays like that, when Donovan hit Avant, that started to get things going.”
The late comebacks will “certainly help us down the line, later in the year,” Eagles’ offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg said. “That will help us later, to get that experience and to know what we need to do in pressure moments.”
NOT A SMART BEGINNING
The first wave of boos came with around 1:38 left in the third quarter. It was then that the reality started to whisk through the crowd at Lincoln Financial Field that this was really happening. That the Eagles were losing to Jason Campbell, Rock Cartwright, Mike Sellers, Quinton Ganther, Malcolm Kelly and those scary Washington Redskins.
That a team that was 3-7 was playing with a greater purpose than what was supposed to be a playoff-bound 6-4 team playing on its home field against an inept offense.
Maybe that’s what confused Reid on Sunday. Maybe the Eagles’ coach thought it was the New Orleans Saints, or Indianapolis Colts, or New England Patriots he was facing Sunday—not the lowly, foundering Redskins.
How else can you explain Reid opening Sunday’s game with an on-side kick, which Washington’s pathetic offense (an offense that scored over 20 points just one other time this season) converted into a touchdown?
“I can shoot myself in the foot for the on-side kick,” Reid said. “But I want to stay aggressive with this. I saw they had a five-man front and I wanted to take advantage of it. I thought it was there and a chance of getting it.”
JACKSON HAS A CONCUSSION
With 7:21 left in the third quarter, McNabb hit DeSean Jackson with a six-yard pass that could be more trouble down the line for the Eagles. Jackson left the field on his own, and then a minute later was headed to the Eagles’ locker room with what Andy Reid defined as a concussion after the game.
When asked about the severity of the concussion, and if it compared to the whack Brian Westbrook took against the Redskins back on October 26, which gave him the first of two concussions that has sidelined him. Reid said “It wasn’t quite like that one. He was a little groggy, but he left the field on his own.”
SAMUEL MARK
Asante Samuel’s two picks on Sunday gives him seven this season, the most in a season by an Eagle since troy Vincent had seven interceptions in 1999.
Joseph Santoliquito is an Emmy Award-nominated sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area.
