Well, it is 12:30 in the afternoon after the Birds‘ Monday Night Football game versus the Cowboys and I am finally waking up.  I’ve been at work since before 8am but the coffee and breakfast bar didn’t do anything for me.  I would like to attribute the “hangover” to massive amounts of alcohol consumption, but in reality, it is the loss to our hated rival and the way we lost that really makes me feel this way.

There are no moral victories and even if you subscribe to that notion, I’m going to go ahead and say last night wasn’t one of them.  Was it a good game?  Well, it certainly was entertaining.  But it was still a loss.  Win or lose, writing is my sports therapy.  This is where I figure it all out.  If I didn’t have this forum, I would probably take it out on my refrigerator.

So, to get right to it, these are my three biggest observations after last night’s game:

1) Yes, DeSean Jackson needs to be brought back down to earth.  Yes, he is an idiot for “Leon Letting” the football after a beautiful pattern, catch, and run.  Yes, he did get lucky.  However, he is a major talent and one heck of a gem from this past year’s draft.  He has stepped up in an otherwise complex offensive system and thrived through the first two games of the season.  However, the antics he pulled last night were a joke.  I think Joe Paterno once said something to the effect of “act like you have been there (the endzone) before” or “act like you’ve done it (made a good play) before” and this could never ring more true.  What worries me especially with last night’s game is that he sees someone like T.O. showboating and tries to keep up.  In a way, I am glad it happened.  Had we not scored on the next play, I might have a different point of view.  But in the long run, maybe it isn’t the worst thing to happen.  He already has a big head and something like that should humble him.  If it doesn’t, Andy sitting him on the bench will.

2) Either Jim Johnson’s defense has run its course or the pieces of that defense need to get better- plain and simple.  I can’t figure out which one it is so I’ll go with a combination of the two.  One the whole, Brian Dawkins, Sean Considine, and the pass rush were all utter failures last night.  Dawkins is my favorite player on the team but he was abused by Jason Whitten and T.O. last night on several occasions.  He is still a leader and can still lay the wood, but boy is he slower molasses in January.  For a normal dude in his mid-30s, Dawkins is fast.  For a defensive back in the NFL, not so much.  Now, I don’t know if it was just a bad night last night, the fact that Whitten and T.O. are two of the best at their positions, or Dawk’s age but something wasn’t right.  Cue Sean Considine.  Can someone please tell me what he is doing on an NFL team?  He is TERRIBLE.  He blew several assignments last night and without having the capabilities of Steve Sabol and NFL Films, I’ll go ahead and say T.O.’s first touchdown was Considine’s fault.  Someone figure out a way to replace that Woody Harleson knock-off in the defensive backfield, please!  As for the pass rush, did we have one last night?  And this is where my initial question about Jim Johnson comes in.  There may or may not have been a blitz last night.  I couldn’t tell you in all honesty.  You know Jim, prevent defenses prevent you from winning and boy did it look like we ran a very unaggressive gameplan last night.  Romo got more abuse from the Northeast Philly bar I was in last night than he did on the field.  And we were hundreds of miles away, under the influence…eating wings.

3) The referees were unbelievably inconsistent.  There must have been something in the air this weekend because the NFL refereeing was just plain bad.  And believe me, this isn’t me saying that the Eagles got screwed and had this call or that call gone their way, they would have won.  No, I am saying that the refs were bad for both teams.  They missed calls, they played the “make-up call” game too much, and made too much of an impact last night.  There were phantom pass interference penalties called and in-your-face facemasks that were missed.  There were obvious holds that were ignored and blocks in the back that were irrelevant.  Overall a bad weekend for the stripes…

Until next time, Go Birds!