Eagles' Win Over Redskins Was a Moral Defeat

Bryan Toporek — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:06:00 -0500

The Eagles ' win over the Redskins Sunday moved the team to 7-4 overall on the season (3-1 in the division) and firmly into the driver's seat for one of the two NFC wild card spots.

But in reality, it was about as close to a defeat as a win could be.

In fact, while the Redskins get credit for another moral victory for keeping the game so close, the Eagles can soundly call Sunday's performance a moral defeat.

Bill Simmons introduced me to the idea of a moral defeat in this reader mailbag of his , where a reader from Illinois proposed:

"[What's] a phrase for a team that plays poorly and barely wins a game that it should have won in a landslide? Why not 'moral defeat'? It's the exact opposite of a moral victory -- an inferior team playing out of its mind and almost toppling Goliath, but being satisfied ultimately with coming so close. You say moral defeat, and everyone knows what you mean: a win so ugly it feels like a loss."

That definition sums up the Eagles' most recent win over the Washington Redskins perfectly.

Yes, the Eagles won by three points, came back in the fourth quarter after being down eight, and showed some heart to move to 7-4 on the season...but why were they in that position in the first place?

Well, for starters: Andy Reid, a man who has outsmarted himself countless times, may have outdone himself yet again this season by opening Sunday's game with an onside kick.

Reid's done this crafty move before, with mixed results. In 2000, Reid caught the Cowboys off-guard and rolled to a 41-14 romp, perhaps signaling the impending changing of the guard in the NFC East that occurred in the early part of this decade.

Three years later, it backfired when the Cowboys' Randall Williams (why always the Cowboys?) recovered the Eagles' game-opening onside kick and ran it back 37 yards in three seconds for the fastest touchdown to start a game in NFL history.

And yes, I know that some NFL statistics websites (like advancednflstats.com , for example) will come out with charts or probabilities that prove a game-opening onside kick is a smart percentage play because the other team likely won't expect such tomfoolery.

But isn't there a point where you're outsmarting yourself? Maybe the other team isn't expecting a game-opening onside kick because it's not the logical decision?

When you're facing a divisional rival that you soundly beat earlier in the season with no major tricks up your sleeve, why, for the love of sweet, newborn, eight-pound Baby Jesus , would you give that team any breath of life the second time around?

I don't care if the ratio of recovering the surprise onside kick is above 50 percent. If the Eagles wanted the ball that badly to start the game, they could have simply elected to receive after winning the coin toss!

Instead, they found themselves down 7-0, two minutes into the game, against a suddenly potent divisional foe.

Make no mistake, the Redskins have been playing better since bringing Sherm Lewis out of the Bingo halls and into the play-calling booth, scoring a huge upset over Denver and giving Dallas the scare of a lifetime last week.

But no one's mistaking Jason Campbell for Peyton Manning any time soon, and with Clinton Portis still recovering from a concussion, the Redskins started a third-stringer named Rock Cartwright as their running back.

Had the Eagles simply kicked a typical kickoff to open the game, there's no reason to believe that the Redskins' offense would have run roughshod over the Eagles' D.

Instead, Reid put his players in a difficult position within the first two minutes of the game, and they had to focus on battling their way out of an early deficit.

The Eagles still looked on their way to another Raiders-esque tankjob, before Donovan McNabb rallied the troops in the fourth quarter to steal a win away from the 'Skins.

"I was proud of him just stepping up and talking over," Reid said. "He was into it. He said, 'Hey, we're scoring.'"

Reid's lucky to have McNabb, a seasoned veteran who could corral his young team and march them down the field at a crucial time in the game.

But the Eagles were missing a key element to their offense on that game-tying drive, as speedy receiver DeSean Jackson got knocked out with a concussion in the third quarter after scoring on a wide-open touchdown in the first quarter. With Brian Westbrook nursing himself back to health after suffering two concussions in four weeks, an injury like this to Jackson was virtually the worst-case scenario for the Eagles (besides a season-ending injury).

Overall, the Eagles may have managed to sneak out a victory on Sunday, but this game came as close to a defeat as a victory could possibly be. Against a team they should have comfortably beaten, the Eagles sloughed their way through nearly 60 minutes of play before pulling together at the end.

It goes down as a win in the W/L column, but does this win inspire any confidence in this Eagles team for the upcoming five weeks?

Welcome to the world of the moral defeat, Philly.

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Eagles' Win Over Redskins Was a Moral Defeat