Thursday Night Football Thoughts

I very much overestimated the fight Philly's players had in them when I made my pick before the game. Aside from Vince Young, LeSean McCoy, and maybe 3 or 4 others, no one on that Eagles team cared. And while Vince Young clearly cared, he also threw 4 interceptions and was one of the biggest factors in Philly losing that game.

If I'm an NFL GM, and I watched that game, how could I justify paying good money to DeSean Jackson? His frame limits him to deep routes and punt returns (though admittedly he's electric at both), but he's got too much Randy Moss the Oakland years in him.

I'm not sure which NFLN commercial is more exasperating to see 500 times during a TNF broadcast: the NFLN pregame show same 3 blurbs ("How about this Tom Brady guy?") or the Red Zone channel showing the same 5 plays with slightly out of sync audio. Couldn't you rotate 3 or 4 commercials to promote your stuff, NFL? Please?

Marshawn Lynch was the anti-DeSean in that a) he clearly cared (see his first TD run), b) is convincing GMs to pay him, and c) should have an endorsement contract with Skittles by next weekend.

As exciting as it was to see my Seahawks win, this game did more to show me Seattle's limitations and how far they still have to go than it did show me how far they've come. Tarvaris Jackson had a great game, statistically, but watching him I saw all the things I've seen all along: no pocket awareness, I don't think he stepped into one throw all night, and an inability to read the blitz or change the play as a result of reading blitz. Defensively, Seattle's cornerbacks did not play especially well, they were simply bailed out by Vince Young's errant throws and the Philly receivers' inability to catch the ball. They have made ample progress from 1 and 2 years ago, but there is still quite some room to improve for this young team.

Finally, Andy Reid has either given up along with 80% of his team, or he's just out to lunch.
- It took him until the 3rd quarter to realize he should run his offense through his best player (LeSean McCoy).
- Not calling a timeout before Seattle's FG just before half, leaving his team 16 seconds to move the ball instead of ~50 seconds.
- Allowing Juan Castillo to continue using the Wide-9 alignment all the time, even against teams with terrible QBs and big threats at RB (like Seattle).
- Not watching any tape from last week's Redskins-Seahawks game. If he had, he would have seen how poorly Seattle reacted to screen passes and play action fakes, plus he would have seen how poorly Tarvaris Jackson did against 6-7 man blitzes (he didn't even get the throw off multiple times against Washington).

Has Reid done plenty for Philly? Yes. Is it time for him to go? Absolutely.