Football Is Back: Eagles Celebrate With A Win Over The Rams!

The first week of regular season football has come to an end and half of the league has a winning record. Fortunately the Eagles are on the winning side. They visited the St. Louis Rams and left with a victory.

Leading up to the first regular season game, the front office had become some busy little bees (or birds I should say) once the lockout ended. They did some major free agent shopping, rivaling a couple of gold diggers in a high end mall with Sugar Daddy's Black card. However, they scored bigger than Gucci, Louis, and YSL. They picked up Nnamdi, Vince, and DRC, just to name a few free agent surprises that had everyone talking about the Eagles. Once the news broke about Asomugha, which sounds like it could be French for kiss my a$$, that's pretty much how Philly fans were feeling. There's no joking around this season. We want a ring!

Much like a gold digger focuses on the consumption of retail trinkets, they're not the type to look to purchase a serious financial investment or two. You know, like a strong offensive line and a key linebacker on defensive, the non-sexy stuff that can make or break you and force you to look beyond the glamour. Don't get me wrong, I think we made great off season moves with the newest Birds in the nest, but we saw evidence of how we are still missing a few key items in the game against St. Louis. Although Michael Vick has strong confidence in his offensive line, I'm not so convinced. And Casey Matthews may look just like his older brother Clay who plays for Green Bay, but after one play you know he's the Eli to your Peyton.

But it sure was good to be parked in front of the TV watching football again. Ahhh, I was back to yelling at the screen, pacing on third downs, doing touchdown celebrations and crossing all ten fingers and toes in those tense moments. You know the kind I'm talking about. Ones like in the first drive of the game when Stephen Jackson scored a touchdown by running all over our shiny new defense. He left the game hurt after that one score and didn't return to the game. But by then we'd been exposed. Note to self for every team on our schedule. Eagles' defense has a hard time stopping the run.

It took the offense a minute to get it going as well. Vick hit the ground a few too many times for my taste, forcing him to scurry out of the pocket or run for his life. He's a playmaker though. But, I think the idea is to have everyone make the plays they're supposed to be making and protect the newly minted $100 million dollar QB. I'm just saying…you’ve got to protect your investment. Otherwise we may as well have Wall Street as our o-line. Then again, we've seen how well they protected our investments so maybe not.

We got it together though and Mike Vick put our first points on the board with a rushing touchdown. He ended up with 187 yards passing and just at 100 yards rushing for two passing TD’s and one on the run. Juqua Parker added a rushing touchdown of his own when he received a sack fumble that was set in motion by Darryl Tapp and ran it into the end zone. Yet it was Shady McCoy who showed off this past Sunday. He rushed for over 120 yards with one touchdown pass from Vick. Many Eagles fans were rubbing their eyes to see if it was really our team that was running the ball consistently? That’s a new concept in these parts. There was a touchdown pass as well to Desean Jackson who also added points to the board. Despite speculation that he may play a soft game because he's hoping for a contract increase, he played with ALL heart!


On the defensive side of the ball aside from Parker's points, Asante Samuel was putting forth a solid effort despite being penalized on a couple of plays. With the addition of Nnamdi Asomugha and Dominque Rodgers-Cromartie, there were rumblings that Samuel may be on the block. And I can tell you that I'm sure glad he wasn't.

It wasn’t exactly pretty but the Eagles handled the Rams by taking a win 31-13.

We have another road game before the home opener on the 25th of September. Atlanta is up next. Oh and this game is going to be a must watch Sunday night game. Michael Vick makes his first return to his former home in the Georgia Dome as the Eagles’ starting quarterback and leader of this team. The dirty blackbirds were in the NFC championship hunt last year but lost to Green Bay. Their trip through Philly last year also left them with a loss. This past Sunday they got mauled by the Bears so expect this one to be intense and personal. And I’ll be there with Al and Chris watching every second of it.

It’s good to be back to football and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you again this year. I’ll see you on the sidelines!


Helen “Love My Eagles” Little