Eagles Will Need To Protect Vick, While Stopping Jacobs & Bradshaw

While the big controversy heading into this Week 3 matchup seems to be the talk surrounding the New York defense’s acting skills, that’s just one of the many subplots to the NFC East battle on Sunday against the Giants. Here are three of them to watch for on Sunday.

Will the Eagles be able to zero in on the Giants offensive backfield?

On the evidence of the first two games, if someone were asked to create a blueprint of how to attack the Eagles defense, you might often find that the general basis of that blueprint would be attacking the middle, where the Eagles much maligned linebackers are, sitting right in front of two unproven safeties in Kurt Coleman and Jarrad Page. For this to happen, the opposing team needs two things, a good running game and good tight ends.

The Giants don’t exactly have fear-inspiring threats at tight end, so this leaves the onus on their running backs to have a big game against the Eagles. Dominic Hixon is out for the rest of season while Mario Manningham could be missing in action as well on Sunday night, and considering that we’ve learned to expect lock down coverage from Nnamdi Asomugha over the years the Eagles should be able to gamble more often on Sunday, stuffing the box, sending blitzes, and at the very least bluffing them on many occasions.

Giants running backs Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs are so diverse (Jacobs with his power, Bradshaw with his elusiveness) that they may just be able to keep the Giants in the game if their skills are used to full effect.

Bradshaw is a game breaker, who can put points on the board every time he gets his hands on the football. The Giants could hand the ball off to Bradshaw or they could dump it to him using screens or short passes out of the backfield.

They could also use Jacobs against the Eagles linebackers by running him right at the undersized group. If the Giants can block the Eagles defensive tackles they can get the Birds linebackers isolated against Jacobs.

On Sunday, Tom Coughlin will try to type pf strategy to avoid a 7th straight loss to Philly but should the Juan Castillo-led defense key in on stopping those two players, and find even mild success, the Birds should be alright.

Will wide receiver Jeremy Maclin continue his Pro Bowl level play?

When Mike Kafka threaded a pass smack dab in the middle of Jeremy Maclin’s chest last Sunday night, only for the receiver to drop it, it made everything the former Missouri man did during game seem irrelevant. Indeed that dropped pass did signify the end of the game for the Eagles, but before that, Maclin was arguably the best player on the field for Philadelphia having caught 13 passes for 171 yards and two TD receptions.

Against the Giants depleted secondary, Maclin may have a good chance to redeem himself with another good performance, especially if the Giants defense performs as badly as they fake injuries.

Will Michael Vick be able to avoid injury while under the pressure from the Giants pass rush?

Alright, we all knew it was coming. Any sort of game preview really can’t go on without mentioning Vick, can it? After all, whether or not it was the main cause for the Eagles’ down fall, when Vick exited the game with a concussion against the Falcons last week, the lead soon left with him as Philly went on to lose by a narrow margin. It is that same concussion that, it appears, Vick has recovered from just in time to play the Giants come 1pm Sunday afternoon.

Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, the main man is back, right? Well, sort of. Vick is, and always will be the biggest part of the team, as are most quarterbacks in today’s league. Considering this, there may be some who might feel a slight sense of uneasiness with Vick coming back so soon, because quite simply with injuries, caution can hardly ever be a bad thing, especially with so much of the season ahead of us.

The Eagles are setting the standard right now as far as the pass rush goes in the NFC East, but the Giants are not too bad themselves when it comes to getting to the quarterback. Justin Tuck and Jason Pierre-Paul are both outstanding pass rushers and they’re likely to get a shot or two at Vick.

Osi Umenyiora isn’t expected to play against the Eagles on Sunday, but Pierre-Paul has stepped in and been more than enough of a pass rushing partner of Tuck. They’re both big, fast and tremendous one-on-one pass rushers. At times each of them is capable of beating the blocks against them, getting to Vick and delivering an injury-causing hit.

Granted, Vick hasn’t had anything like a shoulder or hip injury, parts of the body that opposing players would be more likely to target, but it is a concussion, and with the memories of Brian Westbrook’s time at Philly lingering over Lincoln Financial Field, the very last thing that anyone wants is another situation remotely like it.

The Final Verdict: Expect the Eagles to come out on top with a victory, but there’s no guarantee that their quarterback will come out of the game with a clean bill of health. While few games between these are ever one- sided, this might just be the easiest division game that Philadelphia will play this year.