I'm very upset...I'm in Chicago visiting family for the holidays (left on Saturday) so I saw none of the game and didn't see the injury until after the fact. Obviously this is a major blow to our chances of getting to Jacksonville much less getting out of the NFC playoffs. The optimism is gone because now we go back to pretty much the same team we had last year offensively (the defense is better but our defense wasn't the problem the last couple of championship games IMO).
It's not just losing TO the weapon that will hurt here it's the fact that defenses had to double and sometimes triple team him on the field making it easier for our other offensive weapons to get open downfield. The defense had to be aware of what TO could do even on 5 yard slants. You would have linebackers and safeties moving up to get as close to TO as possible while most of our other offensive guys would be able to roam around and get open. Without him now there is really no one on offense that opposing defenses have to allocate help to in order to stop. I know Westbrook is dangerous but he hasn't had a game to me that opposing defenses would look to on film and say "how do we stop this guy?" He's not as big a threat now without TO distracting defenses.
It's bad right now but it's not hopeless. There are still enough playmakers on this team to win games. The talent gap in the NFC between the Eagles and the rest of the conference is pretty wide even without TO there. The birds did get to 3 NFC Championship games without him. We're just not a lock for the Super Bowl anymore. If they can overcome this injury and get to Jax then maybe TO comes back for the Super Bowl and maybe they find a way to win but frankly if they do get through it I will be surprised now. This gives a lot of other teams confidence that they probably didn't have going into the game having to defend TO and the rest of our offense as it was before the injury.
It's a very sad day in the city. I think we will be attending the next PA meeting (Playoffs Anonymous) with Minnesota V and Buffalo B in a few weeks. It figures I go away for one day and the season goes in the toilet.
:WTF: :WTF: :WTF:
sb
It's not just losing TO the weapon that will hurt here it's the fact that defenses had to double and sometimes triple team him on the field making it easier for our other offensive weapons to get open downfield. The defense had to be aware of what TO could do even on 5 yard slants. You would have linebackers and safeties moving up to get as close to TO as possible while most of our other offensive guys would be able to roam around and get open. Without him now there is really no one on offense that opposing defenses have to allocate help to in order to stop. I know Westbrook is dangerous but he hasn't had a game to me that opposing defenses would look to on film and say "how do we stop this guy?" He's not as big a threat now without TO distracting defenses.
It's bad right now but it's not hopeless. There are still enough playmakers on this team to win games. The talent gap in the NFC between the Eagles and the rest of the conference is pretty wide even without TO there. The birds did get to 3 NFC Championship games without him. We're just not a lock for the Super Bowl anymore. If they can overcome this injury and get to Jax then maybe TO comes back for the Super Bowl and maybe they find a way to win but frankly if they do get through it I will be surprised now. This gives a lot of other teams confidence that they probably didn't have going into the game having to defend TO and the rest of our offense as it was before the injury.
It's a very sad day in the city. I think we will be attending the next PA meeting (Playoffs Anonymous) with Minnesota V and Buffalo B in a few weeks. It figures I go away for one day and the season goes in the toilet.
:WTF: :WTF: :WTF:
sb
