LeSean McCoy was held to 45 yards against Washington. Photo by contrastphotography.com

If you are an Eagles fans, Sunday’s
game against the Washington Redskins was sickening to watch. 

The Birds were never in their 31-6
loss that left them with a 3-7 record and left the players, coaches and fans
searching for anything positive.

There was nothing good to be found about
this loss, except it gets the Eagles closer to the end of a miserable season.

“Obviously turnovers early, penalties
early, drops, giving up big plays…those were problems in this game,” said head
coach Andy Reid, leaving out the kitchen sink but adding the familiar…”That’s
my responsibility to make sure that we get these guys an opportunity to do the
right things, and get them to do the right things, I’m not doing good enough at
it and I’ve got to up my game now.”

Some NFL players go through the ritual
of throwing up before they get started for a game. It seems that Eagles quarterbacks
are partial to throwing the football up to the other team in an effort to get
started.

Rookie quarterback Nick Foles kept
that tradition alive throwing interceptions on the first two series of his first start as an Eagle.

On third and eight, Foles fired the
ball over the middle in the direction of tight end Brent Celek, the ball was
tipped right into the hands of Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall who raced 22
yards before being stopped by a touchdown-saving tackle by tackle Dennis Kelly.

That turnover gave the Redskins (4-6) the
ball at the Eagles nine-yard line. Two plays later it was 7-0 Redskins. Robert
Griffin Jr., the Redskins rookie quarterback sensation, hit Darrell Young for a
six-yard score. 

The Eagles finally got on the board in
the second quarter with an 11-play drive that went 61 yards resulting in a
41-yard field goal by Alex Henery.

The Redskins made it 14-3 when RG3
found a wide-open Aldrick Robinson for a 49-yard touchdown pass. Nnamdi
Asomugha appeared to bite hard on play action leaving Robinson more open than a
guest speaker at an AA meeting.

The game seemed still within reach in
the third quarter with the Redskins leading 17-6 and the home team facing a
third-and-ten from their own 39-yard line. 

The wheels came off for the Birds when
RG3 threw up a prayer deep down the middle. Santana Moss was on a straight up
fly route down the middle of the field. The Eagles had Moss covered with two
defenders and the ball was slightly under thrown, setting up what looked like an
easy interception at about the five-yard line.

But safety Kurt Coleman and rookie nickel
back Brandon Boykin suddenly forgot how to play football.

Moss simply reached up and grabbed the
ball, then lunged backward into the end zone.

Game, set and match…not just for the
game, but for the season.

RG3 threw only 15 passes for the game
and connected on 14 of them for 200 yards, four touchdown passes, no
interceptions and a quarterback rating of 158.3. He ran 12 times for 84 yards
and made key run whenever his team needed it.

Foles threw the ball 46 times,
completing 21 passes for 204 yards, no touchdowns, three fumbles (none lost)
and two interceptions. The rookie was sacked four times.

The Eagles managed just 80 rushing
yards on 21 carries as a team. LeSean McCoy rushed 15 times for 45 yards. Reid
revealed after the game that McCoy suffered a concussion late in the game, long
after the outcome had been decided.

Reid was asked why the centerpiece of
the franchise was in the game with minutes left and no chance for a victory.

The coach simply relied, “I was just
trying to catch up and win the game.”

The Eagles are now 3-7, out of the
playoff picture, their coach a certain lame duck and a fan base that has
stopped being angry and given up. That is the worst-case scenario for any pro
football team.

The newest Eagle, guard Jake Scott who
was signed earlier in week and started the game, said that there is no reason that the
Eagles can’t turn their season around. He said there is only one way that will
happen.

“I’ve been on a team that lost six in
a row,” said Scott, who was out of football for the first ten weeks of the
season. “We came back and finished 8-2 the last 10 games. You turn it around
with hard work. You don’t turn it around with some magic formula. There is no
cure, there’s no magic formula. You show up tomorrow, study like hell, make the
corrections, show up on Wednesday and start getting ready for another game.
It’s not rocket science.”