Eagles lead NFL in dropped balls. Surprised?
Fourteen. Fourteen freaking dropped balls. That is almost 3 dropped passes a game. That means 2-3 at Week 6. So, am I surprised? No, and here's why.
The Eagles front office has set this team up for disaster. By bringing back Donovan McNabb for this season, the Eagles basically told the whole league, "We are going to throw the football". What the Eagles didn't do, however, is go out and get somebody for McNabb to throw the ball to (a la any #1 wide receiver and/or any other TE other than LJ Smith). So now Eagles fans are basically stuck watching a form of two plays on offense. Either, (A) our sub-par wide receivers get covered and/or drop balls, or (B) we watch 12th string RB turned FB, Tony Hunt, create phantom holes for our runningbacks to not run through. On the defensive side, Eagles fans also watch a form of two plays. On one hand, we watch the opposing runningback, who always has the luxury of a real NFL FB as well as a TE who blocks, run for 100+ yds (I don't need to hear that bull of us leading the league in run defense anymore...seriously, how long will that last?) or, we can all watch a real NFL TE catch ("catch" being the keyword here) for 100+ yds and set up camp in the middle of our defense, because for some reason we don't like to cover the TE...ever!
The front office and Andy Reid should be ashamed of themselves not only for the play calling gaffes and the ridiculous roster decisions (I mean, I think we all could have done without Greg Lewis this year), but also for not realizing the urgency to get a #1 WR. The days of coasting through the NFC East and getting into the NFC Championship with WRs like Stinkston and Trash are over. Every NFC East team has tooled up and now all have what we in Philly crave, a legit wide receiver and a TE (oh yeah, they also have a FB). The Cowgirls have Owens and Witten, the VaGiants have Burress and Boss, and the Redskins (don't have a clever name for them...yet) have Moss/Randle-El and Cooley. To have a team like our Eagles, that is so dependant on the pass, not have a premier WR, is nothing short of infuriating. Its absolutely despicable, not to mention a slap in every Eagles fans face, to be the laughing stock of the NFC East at the end of Week 5, when simple moves in the off season could have made Philadelphia "Title Town, USA" with both a World Series and a Super Bowl under our belts. It's just awful.
-- Jay Vaidya (Please feel free to comment and vent your anger as well)
