I know people think I’m being bitter about the loss in my post below. No shit. You’d be bitter if the team you’ve been rooting for since childhood played the most inexplicable game in your lifetime of rooting for them. Even worse, your star player was trying to remind you of Cade McNown.

The point I was making about the Patriots celebration is really minor, it just took up a lot of room because I saw Simmons’s column after I wrote the post. It’s not really a big deal and it didn’t bother me much last night or today. I just find it weird that a team as good as the Pats needs to resort to that sort of mental chicanery to get up for a game. Whatever it takes, I guess.

The biggest thing that I’m walking away with, though, is that the Eagles beat themselves more than the Patriots beat them. The Pats played a fine game and might’ve still won no matter what the Eagles did. The thing is, I would rather have seen that game than the one last night where the team mismanaged the clock and McNabb tried to aim passes into interceptions. We saw what he could do when he wasn’t trying to guide the ball… take a look at the TD passes to Westbrook or Lewis for examples. The Eagles had this game and gave it up to the Pats. I don’t want to take anything away from the Pats… this is a criticism of the Eagles and Reid and McNabb in particular. It would’ve been nice to at least look something like the team that got them to the Super Bowl. It would’ve been nice to see that matchup instead of the game we got…

In retrospect (but not hindsight… we were saying this during the game), inexplicable mistakes included:

• Putting Westbrook and Lito Sheppard (WTF??!) in to return punts instead of the normal special teams unit
• Not adjusting to the 7 man blitzes New England was sending fast enough (I think Reid stuck to his “opening drive” script instead of seeing that we needed the slants and short ins or WR screens to make them pay for the blitzes).
• Blitzing too often. It seemed to me, though I may be completely off on this, that they were getting a better rush with just the 4 man rush or with one outside blitzer.
• Blitzing with Trotter on running plays. I think this was just good coaching from the Pats, but Trotter seems too intent to get into it on running plays. He kept getting wrapped up by the offensive lineman instead of staying back and hitting his gap
• McNabb guiding the ball instead of passing it. Those interceptions had NOTHING to do with the Pats, pressure, or scheme… just about McNabb messing up easy throws (he stepped into the throw for all three INTs, IIRC)
• Last, but not least, the insane clock management. As I said last night, between 6 and 4 minutes in the fourth yesterday was like watching the Grady Little mound visit in the 2003 ALCS. You could just see that the wheels were about to come off the cart.

I don’t want to take anything away from the Pats and how good they were, but man, this game was in the Eagles bag.

(Update: fixed McCown to McNown)