A CITIZEN'S BLOG

I’ll talk about the Phillies relief corps tomorrow, but my thoughts are on last night’s Monday Night Football game between the Steelers and Eagles. As many of you know I blog the Phillies and am a Philadelphia sports fan, but I live in the Steel City area, so I have a unique perspective when Philly and Pittsburgh sports teams collide.

I was pretty impressed last night: generally I think the Eagles played better, and I base that statement by noting that the Steelers first three TDs were the product of Eagles special teams gaffes.

What impressed me was the play of the Eagles wide-receiver corps: the Eagles wideouts have a total of 27 career NFL receptions (and 23 belong to Greg Lewis), but they looked strong last night. Reggie Brown played well, especially given that he’s a rookie. Greg Lewis will play better in the regular season. The person who most impressed me was Billy McMullen, a guy who really seemed like a bust when the Eagles took him. He ran good routes, got open, and make some tough catches.

McNabb settled down and looked poised and confident: you have to think that he might regard this time as an opportunity to prove that his numbers last year were a product of his own progression as a QB and not T.O. Wouldn’t putting up those numbers throwing to Reggie Brown, Greg Lewis and Billy McMullen be sweet revenge for Donovan?

I hope to see a lot more of Ryan Moats in the regular season. He looks tough as nails.

The defensive unit looks pretty sharp. Big Ben didn’t play many snaps, but they looked like they were ready to stop the Stillers first-unit offense.

First impressions: life w/o T.O.* won’t be so bad.

* And don’t kid yourself into thinking that T.O. will return and be a happy camper. He won’t, even if he and Andy Reid kiss and make up this Wednesday. T.O.’s gonna pout the rest of the year: I’ll be stunned if he plays more than a game or two and isn’t suspended for the year by the team at some juncture.

Anyway, back to the Phillies: a pity they dropped last night’s game to the Nats. The loss dropped them to third and pushed them a game and a half out of the wildcard. The team needs to be wary of falling out of the wildcard race quickly. They’ve been lucky this month that they’ve been playing NL West and NL Central teams. They are 36-21 against the rest of the NL and 20-27 against the NL East. Since most games in September are against NL East foes, this does not auger well for the Phillies post-season hopes.