Silverman: Crowning Eagles And Counting Out Giants? Wrong On Both Fronts
By Steve Silverman
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There's a lot of crowing in Philadelphia after the Eagles took apart the Giants last night and put some real distance between the two teams.
A look at the 27-0 beating seems to indicate the Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys – fresh off their impressive road win over the Seattle Seahawks – are the class of the division.
Both of those teams are 5-1, while the Giants fell back to .500 and are a long way from where they thought they were headed after three consecutive wins over the Texans, Redskins and Falcons.
The game was a one-sided beating as the Eagles front seven put non-stop pressure on Eli Manning. They had eight sacks in the game and they nailed Eli six times. Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin had three of those sacks, and he credited the Philadelphia coaching staff for coming up with the winning formula.
The Eagles had noticed how hot Manning had been during the three-game winning streak and they had also noticed how wide open Giants receivers had been.
"We decided we were going to jam their receivers," Barwin explained. "That way Eli couldn't get rid of the ball quickly if his receivers weren't open."
Defensive coordinator Billy Davis' plan played out to perfection as the Eagles won the battle up front. Their defensive front hammered the Giants' offensive line, while the Eagles' offensive line opened holes for LeSean McCoy and kept Nick Foles upright.
Score one for the Eagles and their coaching staff. They won the battle -- and it was a rout.
That's got to make Philadelphia head coach Chip Kelly feel awfully good. He has one of the most innovative and thorough minds in the game and there's no doubt that his star is ascending.
In many ways, this game was the equivalent of the young Turk in the corporate world who used his superior training at an Ivy League MBA program to get the best of the older corporate vice president.
There's an awful lot of silent embarrassment when the old lion gets taken apart by the rising star.
Kelly and his staff certainly got the best of Tom Coughlin and the Giants' assistant coaches in this Week 6 Sunday night showcase game.
But this was just one game, and if Kelly is feeling proud of himself and believes his team accomplished something noteworthy by recording a shutout over the Giants, he is missing out on the big picture.
The idea is to be the best team at the end of the season, and Coughlin has proven he knows how to get his team to peak and come on at the most important time of the year. He has done it twice with the Giants, and they beat teams in Bill Belichick's Patriots that were far better than Kelly's team.
Last year, Kelly made a big splash with the game-planning and conditioning demands he put on his players. However, after the Eagles won the NFC East last year, they lost their playoff game to the New Orleans Saints.
Kelly pushes his players hard to get them to play his type of football. They have put an impressive product on the field in September and early October. They will likely continue to do so through the end of the month.
But Eagles players have made the point on more than one occasion that Kelly asks too much of them in practice on a daily basis. If the Eagles are playing Super Bowl-caliber football in the first two months of the season, but lose their efficiency in December and January, he's not quite the genius he may think he is.
If Kelly doesn't back off of his players at some point in the next few weeks, that is exactly what will happen.
Maybe he realizes that and will change his approach, but winning regular-season games in an impressive fashion doesn't prove anything for Kelly. It's a necessary step, but the season is a long one and he can't take the same approach in the later months that he has in the initial part of the season.
As for the Giants, they lost a game. It was an important game, but it was just one game.
There are deficiencies that have to be cleaned up along the offensive line, and the coaching staff will have to make adjustments.
But don't think for a minute that just because the old lion lost the battle, he is doomed to lose the war. He has seen too much and done too much to let this loss defeat him before the season has reached the halfway point.
The schedule is brutal over the next six weeks (Dallas, Indianapolis, Seattle, San Francisco and Dallas again), so the Giants will know exactly where they stand before they get to Thanksgiving.
It's easy to say they failed in their prime time show against the Eagles, and project that they won't be any better than 1-4 in their upcoming demanding stretch.
But Coughlin has proven his worth time and time again. If the players he has on his roster are worth anything, he will get that potential out of them.
And if they manage to survive this gauntlet, Coughlin will have one prepared team by the time the season reaches the home stretch.
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