The Eagles must start setting the bar higher when they judge their players and their units, if they want to win a championship.
They must evaluate their players and segments of their team after asking the question, “Can this player or offense or defense excel when we’re playing against championship caliber teams.
It’s not a coincidence that the Birds always finish a few levels short of their goals. Can the receievers get open against a good defensive secondary without a strategy that fools them?
You can fool people in September, October, November, December and part of January, but you don't fool people in NFC Championship games and Super Bowls. That is the crux of the Eagles problem.
Many of the uninformed football fans in the area believe that all that matters is the quarterback position. This is foolish thinking.
That brings us to the Eagles wide receiver situation. They have a good wide receiver group but they still don’t have the combination of size and speed, which is going to allow them to succeed against a quality secondary in pure man to man matchups..
Kevin Curtis and DeSean Jackson are good receivers with tremendous speed but they're also both undersized. You can beat these guys up at the line of scrimmage.
Every year the Washington Redskins move their cornerbacks up to the line of scrimmage and shut the Birds wide outs down. They did it this year. They did it last year. They did it the year before that.
It seems every year that once the Skins expose this deficiency, the Birds don’t have a plan to counter it. The Skins play man-to-man., delay the wide receivers release off of the line of scrimmage and shut down the Birds passing offense.
This is why the Eagles must go out and get a guy who can’t be covered man to man. He has to have the combination of size and speed to dominate any time, they see man to man coverage.
It doesn’t have to be a wide receiver, but they can’t depend solely on Brian Westbrook to do this job.
I expect Jackson will get better as he gets older but I doubt that the little guy will ever be a dominant player in the red zone.
For instance if they were to trade for a guy like Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez, he would make it impossible for teams to cover everybody man to man.
Gonzalez would torch the Skins linebackers, if they tried to play him man-to-man. Remember the Eagles won't be fooling anybody in the NFC Champion game or Super Bowl because teams figure out what you're doing after looking at all your games.
Bottom line, the Eagles must have somebody who can get open consistently against outstanding defenses, including when they make it to a championship game.
