They Missed Him Too!!

My last post done in late November was about how while watching the Denver Broncos, I watched Brian Dawkins making plays and missed him playing for the Eagles. As I watched these last two debacles in Dallas this season, I can’t help but think that the Eagles missed his presence and play too. I know that there will be a lot of talk about the Eagles offense (and I’ll talk about that later in this post), but I am convinced that the bigger problem was the defense. Numerous times when both games were close in the first half, the defense had chances to make stops and did not.

There were two reasons I felt that the defense struggled to make stops. First, they were repeatedly beat by the Cowboys in the middle of the field. Second, their tackling was absolutely horrific. These problems also happened to them throughout the season against other teams as well, and with both these problems, Brian Dawkins would have been the perfect answer.

The Eagles problems in the middle of the field started in training camp when their middle linebacker Stewart Bradley was lost for the season due to injury. Their linebacking core was never the same. They even tried to get some veteran leadership by bringing Jeremiah Trotter out of retirement. Nothing worked though and the defense over and over got exploited in the middle of he field both through the air and on the ground. Dawkins was great at “quarterbacking” the middle of the defense – something that was sorely missing this year. I often wondered what would have happened with the Eagles middle linebacking woes if the Eagles had #20 playing in the backfield, able to bark out orders. It was one area in which he was sorely missed.

As for the tackling problems, these were simply inexcusable. It was a problem all season long and it finally became costly these last two weeks against the Cowboys. Especially when the Cowboys committed to the run, the Eagles allowed 3-4 yard runs to turn into 10+ yard runs just because they couldn’t bring the runner down on first and even second contact. That was something that you could never say about Brian Dawkins. Now I know that one player cannot do all the work and that football, more than any other sport, is a team game, but Dawkins’ attitude really rubbed off on the other players and I can’t help but think that his hard nosed attitude, his flying to the ball and not letting up on a play would have showed up in some of these other younger players. Yet another area in which he was missed by the team.

I am still a firm believer that defense wins, but obviously, you have to look at what went wrong on the offensive side of the football when you are only able to score 14 points in two weeks against the same team. Once again I don’t want to get simplistic and point to one player, but I think a lot of it had to do with one guy: Jamal Jackson. When the Eagles lost their center in the second to last game against the Broncos, it really shook up the Eagles offensive line. NFL football games are won and lost at the line of scrimmage and the Eagles offensive line had been in flux all year except for the center position. Despite the other injuries on the o-line, the Eagles offense was still able to move the ball, even against the Cowboys when they played them in the first game – a game they almost won. Jamal Jackson provided consistency to that line throughout all the reshuffling.

However, when they lost Jamal Jackson, all that changed. The center position goes beyond getting a good snap to the quarterback – which was also a problem these last few games. It also includes calling out the blocking schemes and assignments for the other lineman in reaction to what the defense is showing. While the Cowboys boast one of the league’s best pass rushes, I wonder if it would have been as successful against the Eagles had Jamal been healthy. Donovan McNabb had very little time to make plays with his big play weapons because he was constantly under siege. The running game (which is hardly existent anyway) went no where because Dallas just abused the guys up front. While both these games were total team losses, I think the Eagles would have fared much better had Jamal still been snapping the ball and leading the offensive line.

I’ll try and repost again after I’ve had some time to reflect a little more on the season as a whole, but this whole season, I kept thinking the same thing over and over, “Boy I wish they still had Dawkins!” After these last two losses, the team’s coaches and management are probably thinking the same thing too.