Thread: Beating Ourselves

Sorry I still think Philly outplayed us. The TO catch was crap, and yes we had lots of stupid penalties and some turnovers. But we played poorly most of the night while Philly played a pretty solid game on both sides of the ball.

A lot of the reasons people are giving why we beat ourselves are actually because of good plays by Philly especially on defense and of course the crowd. Culpepper almost never threw deep the whole night. Why? The line was constantly getting pressure on him, and forcing him to scramble...and the Eagles secondary did a pretty good job in pass defense, the best I've seen against our team in quite a while. Culpepper fumbled the ball twice, and I think Smith did too. Why? They were forced by Eagle defenders, mainly Nate Wayne who played very well. The Vikings had some stupid penalties. Why? Part of it was crowd noise, something a home crowd is supposed to do to help their team play better and screw the visiting team up. And the Vikings, still a young team that is poor on the road, are susceptible to it. Philly of course did not make those mistakes, so they played better.

I think some people are hounding on our guys way more than they should. We went into Lincoln Stadium and lost to the Eagles. Against a coach that has only lost 1 Monday Night game ever. They're better than us right now, that's all it comes down to. Nothing wrong with that. We still did better than most teams would in that situation. Our defense had several rookies and second year players starting, yet managed to shut down TO most of the night and hold the Eagles to less than 100 yards rushing. Our offense faced a tough D and still had over 400 yards of production.

In the end the Eagles took advantage of their opportunities better than the Vikings. They were better, plain and simple. On another day, the Vikings could beat the Eagles. But not this time. I may be alone in this opinion but that's how I see the game. Time to get ready for Chicago, a team we are better than and I expect we will show it this weekend.

SD, all of what you say is true, except that Philly didn't "outplay" the Vikes...they only took what the Vikes (and refs) gave them and maximized their return on investment (i.e., scored when given the chance). You could call that outplaying the Vikes, but to me "outplaying" is closer to dominating than barely squeaking out a win (which is more of what the Iggles did). Granted, the win is the most important thing, but Philly hardly won this game handily. In the end, I do have to agree that it is time to get ready for Chicago. But the game is not until next Sunday, so let's have some more fun psychoanalyzing the Vikings' shortcomings until then.