Welcome to The Takeaway, where we take away the three key points from the Eagles previous game, in this case the team's 31-13 win over St. Louis.
1. Man, the Eagles sure are good at injuring other players! You know, I spent so much of this preseason fretting over Mike Vick's ability to stay healthy that it never occurred to me that OTHER football players are just as susceptible to going down with various pulls and tears. But then I saw Steven Jackson blow by the Eagles' defense for that first score and, just when you thought Philly was in trouble... BOOM! He's out and replaced with the corpse of Cadillac Williams. Then Danny Amendola got hurt. Then Sam Bradford got hurt at the end. It was like a state fair of injuries out there for the Rams. Meanwhile, Mike Vick danced through it all unscathed, almost as if all the talk of him getting injured acted as a magical means of preventing just that from happening. All that said...
2. People other than Mike Vick need to run the ball more. When Andy Reid has a gifted multipurpose back, he seems to go out of his way to make sure that back gets no more than 20 touches a game. It's an aggravating stance because look at what LeSean McCoy did to ice this game in the fourth quarter. He ran for 77 yards IN ONE DRIVE. On just three runs. He ran for 122 yards on just 15 carries and there's no reason he couldn't have had more of them. Mike Vick ran nine times for nearly 9 yards a carry and while I like seeing Mike Vick doing what Mike Vick does as much as you do, you can't expect him to carry the ball 150 times in a season and expect him to live. McCoy only ran the ball twice in the second quarter. Not good enough. This is a young offensive line. You can make life easier for them earlier in the year by emphasizing McCoy, at least until they have their wits about them. Vick was sacked three times and lost one fumble yesterday, and those numbers will consistently be that way if McCoy doesn't get more touches.
3. Continuity is overrated. I didn't see the Eagles have a very hard time picking up where they left off from last season did you? Everything you liked about them was still there: the effortless deep passes from Vick to DeSean, the big LeSean runs to ice the game, etc. And some of the new defensive contributors like Nnamdi and Cullen Jenkins were integrated seamlessly. The run defense needs work. And Vick was under duress as always. But otherwise, not much seems to be out of place. They went on the road and beat a rising team they should have beaten. All business. All good. Onto Atlanta.
