The Eagles have two outstanding corner-backs, Asante Samuel and Shedlon Brown, but you wouldn’t know how good they are by the way they played against the Chargers.
Rivers didn’t have a big day throwing the ball but it wasn’t because of the play of the Eagles cornerbacks. They were beaten on some key plays which helped the Chargers win the football game.
Brown strained his hamstring during the game and had to be replaced by Dmitri Patterson.
San Diego starting out the game going after Brown. On their first down of the game, Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers ran a bootleg and hit tight end Antonio Gates on a short outside route.
Brown seemed to be right there for the tackle but missed it.
On the second play of their first drive, Phillips hit Gates again on a slant route and he ran the pattern against Brown.
Later on a deep route, Chargers wide receiver Malcolm Floyd pushed Brown to the ground before catching the pass down the sideline.
It set up a short touchdown run by Tomlinson.
Samuel showed us again that there isn’t a tackling clause in his contract. He tried to cut Tomlinson one time and I would have laughed if it wasn’t hurting the team so bad.
What was Samuel doing coming up on the underneath receivers while Rivrers threw a touchdown pass to Legedu Naanee?
I think Samuels was gambling for an interception and he got burned. This was a pathetic football play.
His tackling lacks any fundamentals. He dives at the ball carriers ankles and hopes he trips over him.
It rarely works.
Samuel also made a poor play on the Chargers last drive. It was 3rd and two.
Samuel was one on one on the outside receiver with two receivers inside of his guy.
The wide receiver went inside in motion.
With the down and distance situation and the Birds trailing by five and in desperate need of the football, Samuel should have gone up and attacked the short pass play.
Instead he did what the Chargers knew he was going to do. He stays deep and off the receiver, so they were able to hit him with a short pass, then Samuel missed the tackle and he got more yardage.
