With another playoff game approaching, I read something on Philly.com which was written by Phil Sheridan yesterday that I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, about how the Eagles defense chokes in championship games.
In the five championship game losses this organization has suffered in the past decade, their defense has force only two turnovers in those 20 quarters of football.
That’s about 325 plays, yet they have forced only two turnovers. It has to be a record.
They’re averaging a turnover in less than 1% of the plays. Eagles defenses which were prolific during the regular seasons in forcing turnovers, don’t get the job done in championship games. It’s a fact.
Two turnovers in five games is what I call choking. One interception and one fumble recovery in an entire decade of championship games.
Those stats are staggering. Five games is nearly one-third of a season and the defense has forced two lousy turnovers. They had five sacks.
Yet, Eagles fans celebrate all of the defensive players like Brian Dawkins, Hugh Douglas, Troy Vincent and Sheldon Brown, as big game players but Donovan McNabb is the choker.
This is why I laugh at some of the nonsense reporting on the Eagles and I defend McNabb because I look at the facts and what happens on the field. Defenses are just as important in championship games as offenses.
When I identified how much the Eagles defense has stunk up the place when I was comparing Brian Dawkins’ and Donovan McNabb’s performances in championship games, fans have written me nasty letters.
All I dd was identify the facts. I agree that McNabb deserves some criticism for the losses.
He threw a couple of costly interceptions in the Super Bowl. He also threw for nearly 400 yards and three touchdowns in the same game.
He generated all the offense because the Eagles had no running game. They ran the ball for about 40 yards.
He has thrown interceptions at the end of a couple of those NFC Championship game losses, but in most of the games he was going into a gun fight with a water pistol-like group of wide receivers.
Bottomline is that all we talk about here in Philadelphia is Donovan McNabb when the fact is we shold take a hard look at how our defenses choke in championship games.
