The Death Star

A joyous mob- well, joyous after we got our booing of McNabb out of our system and the touchdowns started raining down- got to imagine a raspy voiced Andy Reid intoning the magic words: Now witness the power of this fully operational battle station!

Well, that was encouraging people! Consequently, this will be a short post because, after all, what was there to complain about. Like what can I write after that: how to achieve more style points?

I mean, yes, sometimes the head coach- bless him- needs to be firmly reminded he has one of the two, three best offensive lines in professional football. And surely kudos must go to the beleaguered quarterback: McNabb went 21-for-26 for 381 yards with four touchdowns- completing eighteen balls in a row at one point.

But a lot of credit has to go the creation and execution of a scheme that allowed the offensive line to really get after people. The game was made “easy to play” for them: running on first down, pass blocking out of play-action sets that weren’t total frauds due to throwing every play, getting the more mobile members out on screens and stretch runs to the perimeter- lots of change of pace, style and tendencies. For example, they actually ran like five plays for the fullback in short yardage situations! The guys up front responded to playing downhill- and add big days from McNabb and Westbrook- and the situation for the Lions quickly got out of hand.

The Loins did get a ton of yards- generated some big plays in the passing game. I don’t know. The Eagles were missing both Dawkins and Sheppard, the Lions do have skilled wide outs and I don’t know how to maintain the requisite intensity up four scores most of the time. And the Lions did keep Kitna out there pitching until the absolute bitter end. Still a lot of mysteries on that side of the ball- but in this sort of rout I am not sure if there are relevant lessons- short of “Watch out New England!”

Still, no matter how impressive the win, I wrote last week that it means little if they can’t carry it over to beat a Giants’ team that is one step better than, say, a “mess”. But more accurately, they probably need to get two of the next three: Giants (A), Jets (A), Bears (H)- to feel like they’ve righted themselves. Even with Dallas increasingly looking like a real danger to flirt with eleven win territory, they probably could lose one of those three and still be in the divisional mix- but they’d be looking at having to complete an outright, and problematic, Dallas sweep.