Well, you can’t say that the Philadelphia Eagles didn’t have any chances to pull out the victory at the Louisiana Superdome. Maybe the New Orleans Saints still deserved the right to travel to the “Wind City” next Sunday with a date against “Da Bears”. After this disheartening loss, the Eagles felt like they missed a chance at their 5th championship game in 6 years. Two golden opportunities went a wasted. The first came very early in the fourth quarter right after a holding penalty set the Eagles back with a 1st-and-20 situation. Jeff Garcia found Reggie Brown open for a short pass along the left sidelines. Brown turned and gained 24 yards on the play. Brian Westbrook ran off of left-tackle for another 13 yards. Then he gained another 9 yards down to the 4-yard line. You felt pretty confident that the Eagles would take the lead at 28-27 on the next 1-2 plays. Westbrook was stuffed for no gain on 2nd down. And on third down, Garcia tried to force a short pass to Thomas Tapeh, who was gang-tackled for a 2-yd loss. Andy sent out Akers, who successfully kicked a 24-yd FG to cut the lead to 27-24. The Eagles should have had a better result. That is exactly what hurt the Giants chances of winning game(s) late in the season and playoffs against these same Eagles; bad plays in the red zone!

Well anyway, the teams then traded possessions with no results except a punt. The Saints regained possession on their own 29-yd line and proceeded to run Deuce McAllister 4 straight times. On a critical 3rd-and-9, Drew Brees found rookie wideout Michael Colston open for 13 yards and a huge Saints’ first down. New Orleans had already had eaten up 3:16 off the clock with just 5:04 now left in the game. You had this sick feeling inside that the Saints were going to drive the field, kick a FG (if we were lucky) and force the Eagles to score a touchdown with 30 seconds left in the game. The outstanding rookie Reggie Bush ran the next play for another 7 yards, and then McAllister bulled his way for another first down. Only 4:18 left and McAllister added another 3 yards down to the Eagles 35-yard line. Eagles used their first timeout. Then a funny thing happened. Drew Brees tried to pitch the ball to Bush. The Eagles DE Darren Howard read the play and the Saints rookie mishandled the ball and the ex-Saints defensive end somehow recovered the ball at the 44-yard line. First down for the Eagles with 3:18 left in the game. The Eagles were in great shape to at least be able to get into field goal position and send the game into OT. Nothing worked on the first 3 plays, setting up 4th-and-10. Garcia somehow found Hank Baskett across the middle for 17 yards and an apparent first down. It looked all roses for the Eagles, except that Sean Young was flagged for a false start. Young had replaced the Prow-Bowl Shawn Andrews after he suffered some sort of neck injury. The Eagles then decided to punt the ball away.

The Eagles had one more chance to stop the Saints and get the ball back for Jeff Garcia. Three straight runs of 4, 5 and 5 yards by McAllister sealed the deal and the Superdome fans roared in celebration as the Saints were going to win this playoff game and advance to their first ever championship game. The Eagles could have had one more chance if they could only stop the Saints just one more time. They couldn’t. The Giants gashed the defense last week, but they were brutalized by the Saints in this game, just 6 days after the win against New York. That ultimately cost the game for the Birds, as the defense could really never stop the Saints running game. Simply put, they ran out of gas. If not for that Bush fumble, there would have been no questions asked to why Andy Reid punted the ball on fourth down. I believe along with the experts that he was correct in his thoughts that the punt was the correct call. Both Dawkins and Trotter could do nothing in that last series of running plays by Deuce McAllister. McAllister in the game, rushed 21 times for 143 yards. His partner, Reggie Bush, only managed 52 running yards on 12 carries. They held Bush in check for the most part except for 2 plays. Late in the first quarter, he somehow escaped the Eagles defense and gained 25 yards, when it looked like he would lose 5 yards. Then he also made some nice moves on his second quarter 4-yd TD run. But for the most part, the Eagles defense held Bush to basically nothing. In fact, on the play two of the game, the Eagles Sheldon Brown almost knocked the rookie running back into tomorrow. You just got to admire the way he shook off that hit and came back into the game on the Saints next possession.

On the Eagles scoring drives, you’d thought it was Donovan McNabb back in at QB as the Eagles reverted back to their old ways of making huge plays. After a quarter of getting nothing accomplished, the Saints had 2 field goals and a 6-0 lead. On the Eagles fourth possession and a 3rd-and-9 staring at them, Garcia found plenty of times to unload a deep, deep pass downfield to a wide-open Donté Stallworth for a 75-yd TD. On their next possession, Garcia hooked up with Reggie Brown on a 32-yd pass, and then completed another pass for 25 yards to Hank Baskett. Westbrook gave the Eagles a 14-13 halftime lead when he hurdled the pile with just 50 seconds left. Early in the third quarter, Westbrook broke loose off of right tackle and ran the ball for 62 yards for his second TD of the game. At the time, the score read 21-13 Eagles. You felt real good about their chances. The Saints marched straight down the field on their next 2 possessions, scoring 2 TD’s and retaking the lead at 27-21. The Saints also consumed over 12 minutes of the clock on those two drives. Now that the season is over, the Eagles need to shore up the linebackers corps someway or somehow. They really need to resign Stallworth and possibly Garcia. Everything else is pretty much set, maybe a little tinkering here and there. With situations in New York and Dallas, it looks really bright for the team going into next season. Hopefully, we can win a few more games and get one of those first-round byes, which they could of really used this season. And hopefully we will get a fully healed Donovan McNabb back too. Like I said in the headlines above, the season is over, but what a ride!