I think it’s safe to say you probably cringed as much as I did when you heard Brian Westbrook wasn’t going to play in Sunday Night’s Eagles-Giants game. The reaction was probably something similar to the feeling you get when you watch the beginning of a bad Kevin Costner non-baseball movie: It’s going to be a long night. Philly fans were in for one and it certainly was just that for the Eagles.

Few teams in the NFL can boast a running back that plays with the flare that a guy like Westbrook does. He runs with a certain grace and makes plays that 95% of backs his size normally wouldn’t make. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. “B-West” has 19 catches and 51 carries in 2007. That’s 25 percent of the receptions and almost 53 percent of the carries. Westbrook is the team’s workhorse but you already know that. The problem is when he doesn’t play that means the Eagles need to find a new staple to their offense if you will. It makes it difficult when your options in the backfield are Correll Buckhalter and Tony Hunt.

Now don’t get me wrong. Buckhalter filled in the way a good backup does when he’s given the workload. He ran for 103 yards on 17 carries and even showed flashes of the player who scampered for ten touchdowns over his first two years in the league. Still, he lacks Westbrook’s ability to change the face of a football game. You know what I’m talking about. A quick cut here, a broken tackle there, and it’s celebration time.

Westbrook’s absence made Donovan McNabb and company even more reliant on the pass which frankly is never a good thing. The Eagles don’t exactly have big, physical receivers. That’s fine when you play a team like the Lions, who don’t use press coverage but it changes with a more hard-nosed, in-your-face secondary. The book on Philadelphia wideouts: hit them at the line of scrimmage and you’ll get the results you want. The Giants ended up with what they wanted and more. On a night where Philadelphia needed pass protection, it didn’t get any. Birds offensive tackle Winston Justice made New York defensive Osi Umenyiora look like Deacon Jones. Now one can’t place all the blame on a guy who was making his first NFL start. You would almost have to expect that Juan Castillo would prepare the kid a little bit better than that. Someone go massage William Thomas’ sprained knee back to health….please!

The Eagles discovered Sunday night what most of us already knew. Unless this team finds some other source of offensive consistency (or Westbrook carries the team until his back gives out), it’s going to be a very long year for the Birds. Last time I checked, the fairytale ending for Philly fans included both the Phillies and Eagles in the playoffs. Who says they can’t have both? Westbrook needs to get healthy and get back in the lineup. The question that remains: Does that get the Birds back on track?