Where do I even begin? I will bitch and moan a little too. It was a great atmosphere before kickoff. Most people were real jovial, but not overly confident like last year’s failure. I’ve read many articles from the Daily News writers. I don’t agree with all that they say except on the one fact about the eagle wide receivers. The Carolina offense barely did anything. Time of possession? Even. Penalties? Even. Passing yards? Advantage Eagles (152 to 101 yards). Rushing Yards? Slight Advantage Panthers (155 to 137 yards). First Downs? Advantage Eagles (18 to 14). The Carolina rushers didn’t overwhelm the Eagles defense as the defense played pretty admirably. Duce Staley rushed 13 times for 79 yards, while Correll Buckhalter gained 48 yards on 11 carries. Carolina’s twosome of Davis & Foster gained respectively, 76 and 60 yards each. What about the Panthers’ QB Jake Delhomme? He only threw a paltry 14 times, completing 9 passes for a grand total of 101 yards. So why did the Eagles lose 14-3? Carolina made some big plays and the Eagles made some very big bad plays. On the Panthers first TD, Mushin Mohammad made a nice catch on a wounded duck of a pass that should have been intercepted or knocked down for an incompletion. The result at best should have been a field goal. The Eagles defense only made 3 bad plays all game long. As I said, Taylor and Dawkins failed on the first TD. The second could be said for some poor tackling on DeShawn Foster’s TD run, but he probably would have scored on the next play anyway. It was first and goal on the TD run to begin with. The other was the play before the TD run when Lito Sheppard was called for pass interference in the end zone.

Ok, if you discard those 3 plays on defense, you are only looking at a 6-3 deficit. The Eagles defense held Carolina in check all game and I was happy that they got their act together after letting so many teams gain over 300 or more yards in many games. The Eagles defense allowed only 256 total yards combined. The Eagles had 289 yards. So how did we lose? For one, you can’t win if you only score 3 points. Three lousy points. They had 10 in last year’s NFC Championship and had their butts whipped. This year, they only scored 3 and were totally embarrassed. Two years with home field advantage. Two years and only 13 points on offense. The defense was fine and the 3 mistakes were big. It was the offense that made many more mistakes. The Eagles QB’s threw 3 interceptions in the red zone, four all together. Teams that are –4 on the turnover ratio usually lose 98% of the time. And 3 of the 4 INT’s were not even the quarterback’s fault. The fourth and last turnover was the game ender when Koy Detmer drove the field and with the ball inside the 5-yard line, he was blitzed. Detmer just threw the ball away to Dan Morgan who was standing right in the middle of the field where Detmer simply tried to dump the ball. The Eagles lost this game because of the direct play of their wide receivers, who came up small in the biggest of games.

Todd Pinkston and James Thrash had 1 catch for 9 yards and were directly responsible for 3 of the 4 INT’s, which 3 of them Donovan McNabb threw. Just forget about McNabb’s 19.3 QB rating, which was totally not his doing. Besides the 3 interceptions, the Eagle receivers also dropped 8 passes, including one by Duce Staley and Chad Lewis. You factor in all that and at worst, McNabb should of completed 18 of 24 passes with a TD or 2 and maybe another FG. The score could have been 16-14 instead of a big “L”. The defense played better than good, forcing 8 punts. They basically allowed 1 TD directly with the second TD was a result of a James Thrash dropped pass resulting in an easy pick for Rick Manning. All these bad mistakes doomed the offense and they were still in the game until Detmer’s bad pass deep in Panther’s territory. Even Carolina did not take advantage of all the big mistakes; hence they only won game 14-3.

Last and the not the last, how can the NFL protect some quarterbacks like Peyton and Farve and not others like McNabb and McNair? I hope the NFL and CBS are looking forward to one of the worst rated Super Bowls in a long time. Carolina and New England! Maybe, they both deserve to be there, but if they continue to allow cheap shots on the NFL’s best players, then they will be no different than the NHL. Greg Favors took a cheap shot on McNabb as he lay helplessly on the ground. Wake up you stupid referee. If that were Hugh Douglas, he would have been given a personal foul and then received a $25,000 fine. Maybe the NFL should start handing out game misconducts when a player hurts a QB as Favors did. And if Favors was not such a cheap S.O.B., McNabb may have been able to make more plays, possibly enough for Philly to actually pull this game out. They certainly would of scored a few more points, perhaps losing only 14-13 instead. After McNabb was wrongly injured, they kept coming after McNabb sacking him 4 more times. I sure hope Andy Reid does something finally to correct the problem at wide receiver. Heck, the Phillies have done all that and more to set themselves as the odds on favorite to win the National League pennant this year. And until Reid and Joe banner sit down and realize that, that’s all we will ever do in the playoffs. Win 1 and done!!!