Philadelphia Eagles: Plenty of Playtime for Starters on Friday Night

I’m going to go ahead and make the assumption that if you’re reading this, you probably don’t like the preseason. Most people don’t. If you’re one of these people, there’s good news for you. The Eagles starters will play three quarters on Friday night against the Chiefs.

The third preseason game is always the best game of the preseason, because the starters spend more time on the field than any other game.

With all the playtime they get, it allows the starting units to work out the problems they’ve had in the first two games.

Offensively, I want to see some serious scoring, and I’m not talking about field goals. The first team offense is yet to score a touchdown, and that’s a problem. They’ve come close in both games, but close doesn’t count.

I’m not overly worried about the lack of touchdowns from the first team. They’re not displaying all their red zone packages in the preseason, and we will probably see a healthy dose of Michael Vick in the red zone during the regular season. However, if they are unable to find the end zone in three quarters against the Chiefs, I will be upset.

When the topic has been brought up to Kevin Kolb over the past two weeks, you can tell that he is bothered by the absence of touchdowns. This is his offense and not scoring touchdowns is a reflection upon himself.

Personally, I think this offense is way too talented to have this problem. I believe they’ll find a solution somehow and erase this concern from our mind.

On the defensive side of the ball, I’ve been pretty happy with what they’ve done so far. After their first outing, there was a lot of excitement about the defense but it could only be to a certain extent. They looked good, but were only on the field for six plays.

Against the Bengals, the first team defense played an entire half and held a pretty talented Cincinnati offense to only seven points while forcing two turnovers. They didn’t look down right devastating, but I was happy with what I saw from the unit considering the questions surrounding them.

So far, I’ve liked what I’ve seen from rookie Nate Allen. He did get run over by Cedric Benson, but immediately bounced back from it and was all over Carson Palmer in a play that forced him to throw an interception.

The corner spot across from Asante Samuel was also a big question mark heading into this year, and I’ve been very happy with the play of Ellis Hobbs so far.

Kansas City isn’t a team who impresses me offensively so I’m looking for the first team defense to come up big tomorrow.

Make sure that you enjoy this game, because next week’s matchup with the Jets will be a whole different story in terms of playtime for the starters.