The Philadelphia Eagles, who started out of the gate of this 2006 season, saw their lights turned out when Donovan McNabb tore up his ACL in an embarrassing 31-13 loss to the Tennessee Titans. McNabb and his backup in Jeff Garcia are not at fault in this terrible display of Eagles’ football. Now the defense, which somehow forgot how to tackle people and the entire receiving corps, including the running backs and tight ends all somehow caught the dreaded disease in football know as “dropsytheballitis”. Back to the QB’s; Donovan McNabb’s first quarter saw the QB complete 6-of-13 passes for 78 yards. Tennessee began the game with a 6-play, 71-yard TD drive that only took 3:35. Rookie QB Vince Young hooked up with Ben Troupe for a 14-yard TD pass to give the Titans an early 7-0 lead. It was a 43-yard run by backup running back Chris Henry that setup the Titans’ first score. But it was sloppy tackling that allowed such a huge play from the start. Just the game’s 4th play from scrimmage and you could see that the Eagles were in for a very long day. The Eagles’ first possession ended with a punt, but a fumble by Drew Bennett at the Tennessee 12-yard gave the ball right back to Philadelphia in prime shape to tie the game. The Eagles moved the ball to the 3-yard line and setting up a first-and-goal situation. On third down, McNabb rolled out to his left on a play the Eagles had run a thousand times, only to see his pass severely under thrown. The pass ended up in the arms of linebacker Stephen Bullock for an INT and a Titans touchback.

Tennessee regained possession of the ball again, but the Eagles defense held and forced a Titans punt. This time, McNabb drove the team quickly 47 yards on 5 plays. The key play was a 40-yard pass to Donté Stallworth. Of course, the offense sputtered and Akers was forced to convert on a 42-yard FG. That made it 7-3. The Eagles defense again held Tennessee and then on the second play of the second quarter, fate once again struck down the Eagles. Donovan McNabb was flushed from the pocket and tried to escape to the sidelines to his right. He was pushed slightly as he was going out of bounds. It looked innocent enough, except that McNabb could not get up. A few minutes later, the cart took him away. And later, Andy Reid delivered the bad news, “All right, Donovan McNabb. He has an ACL tear. That’s an 8-months-to-a-year injury, so he’s done for the year.” The Eagles appeared to be done too, though the standings don’t show that. With games at Indy, home against Carolina and then 3-straight road games, all against NFC East opponents, it will take quite a miracle to just make the playoffs. Without the team’s commander, this Eagles ship has sunk just like the Titanic. Jeff Garcia made the score 7-6 with a nice 9-play, 48-yard FG drive, but the defense allowed the Titans to drive straight back down the field. The drive stalled forcing Tennessee to settle for a FG themselves, making the score 10-6 in favor of Tennessee at the half.

Maybe we should just forget about the second half, as it only got worse. On a comedy of errant plays, missed tackles and fumbles, Tennessee won going away, 31-13. First after the Eagles first possession of the third quarter, Chris Henry took the Titans first play from scrimmage from his own 30-yard line and ran it back for an improbable 70-yard touchdown. Both Darwin Walker and Mike Patterson were blown off the line and Trotter overran the play entirely. Add another 3-4 missed tackles and Tennessee had a 17-6 lead. Then just 3 ½ minutes later, Pacman Jones returned a punt for a 90-yard TD return. On this play, at least 6 Eagle players had a chance to tackle Jones and failed. Just look at these 3 plays, the 70-yd TD run by Henry, the 40-yd run by Henry earlier in the first quarter and, all followed by the 90-yd punt return and you have 21 ultra-quick points. If the defense could have tackled somebody on these plays, perhaps the score would have been 6-3 in favor of the Eagles instead of 24-6 in favor of the Titans. Jeff Garcia is a very good backup quarterback as he completed 26 of 48 passes (54.2%) with 1 TD and no INT’s. His QB rating was 70.6. Not bad for a QB coming in cold. Vince Young only completed 8-of-22 passes (36.4%) for a measly 101 yards, yet Tennessee won going away.