It's the end of October and that means two things. One, the clocks fall back, and so any hopes of after-work golf retire until the clocks spring forward an hour. And second, it means people don lots of crazy costumes.
Some will take the "scary" approach and cover themselves in fake blood and plastic power tools gone mad. Others take the comedic approach and pretend to be a characature of the current president or a pop culture figure like Jessica Simpson.
And yesterday, the Philadelphia Eagles, the perennial elite of the NFC, pretended to be the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Who knew Donovan McNabb could pull off Steve Spurrier -- the player, not the ol' ballcoach -- so well?
To be fair, for a portion of the game, the Eagles did remove the thick plastic mask and the orange and red unis to play like the team that came within two minutes of winning last season's Super Bowl. By the second quarter, the Eagles were down 28-0, but then scored 21 unanswered points over the second and third quarters. For a time they were the team we watched and marvelled at in 2004.
But the high-flying performance in the middle of the game was bookended by simply awful play by the Eagles. They started the game on defense and allowed the Broncos to march down the field with impunity for a touchdown -- let's not forget, this is the same defense that held LaDanian Tomlinson to just seven yards last week. And then, when the offense got the ball for the first time, head coach Andy Reid predictably called seven straight pass plays on before finally calling a run play. And during those first seven plays, McNabb was constantly pressured by the Broncos' blitz, the offensive line masquerading as a seive. McNabb, for a myriad of team reasons and individual reasons, was not able to complete a pass until his fourteenth attempt.
In the fourth quarter, the Eagles were within twenty-four yards of tying the game, but McNabb threw and interception to the Broncos, who five plays later scored a touchdown to increase their lead to fourteen points, 35-21.
From their, it was if the wind was sucked out from beneath the Eagles wings as the Broncos went on to score fourteen more unanswered points. Final score, 49-21.
Undoubtedly, some will now predict the demise of the Eagles 2005 season. But all is not lost. The team still has a very good chance of finishing the season around 10-6, and 10-6 teams rarely miss the playoffs.
To get to 10-6, the Eagles will have to win 6 of their last 9 games, something not out of the realm of possibility. Of course, it would help if they play with the urgency of a seven-year old out to get his or her first treat of Halloween night.
