Donovan McNabb and the Eagles passing game had a good day in San Diego, but they couldn’t pull off the comeback.
If they had one more timeout, they might have been able to get the job done. But of course they didn’t have enough timeouts.
McNabb threw for the second most passing yardage in his career. He threw for 450 yards with two touchdowns and one interception which was a prayer throwin into the end zone.
McNabb made quite few outstanding throws and seemed to be at the top of his game for most of the afternoon.
Nearly all of the Eagles receivers got in on the action.
Jason Avant had a career day, eight catches for 156 yards, and an outstanding one-handed grab on third down to keep a touchdown drive alive. Avant is the ultimate 3rd down threat who will come down with the ball if McNabb throws it his way.
DeSean Jackson had eight catches as well despite playing on a sprained ankle. His catches tallied 91 yards because the Chargers played off of him and gave him the underneath area.
Rookie Jeremy Maclin pulled down 6 catches for 76 yards and a touchdown. I didn’t think the offensive pass interference penalty which was called against him was a good one.
He’s got to keeping moving and stay alive during plays. On the touchdown play, he stopped on the middle of a slant route. You can’t do that in the middle of a route. It’s a Cardinal sin.
Thankfully, Maclin did start moving again and was able to get open in the corner of the end zone.
Brent Celek had another big day and he pulled down six catches for 47 yards and a touchdown.
Even Reggie Brown got in on the action with two catches for 36 yards.
And finally running backs Brian Westbrook caught 2 passes for 26 yards and LeSean McCoy grabbed 3 balls for 18 yards.
Still with all of that McNabb and the Birds weren’t able to get the ball into the endzone in key situations.
It’s true that the closer the Eagles got to the endzone, the more the Chargers dropped into the endzone and protected paydirt, while knowing that they didn’t have any fear of a running game.
The fact of the matter is that when you don’t have a running game, then as a quarterback you don’t have as much room for error.
Bottomline is that regardless of how many yards McNabb threw for, the Birds didn’t win the football game.
