Eagles Beat Giants? Hard to Believe, Harry

Are you encouraged or steadfastly skeptical of your Philadelphia Eagles?

A few days after Donovan McNabb’s second half benching and subsequent loss to Baltimore and a week and a half after a putrid tie at Cincinnati, the Eagles managed to pull it all together and lay the wood to a rather respectable (albeit one-dimensional) Arizona Cardinals side. A Cardinal win would have ensured them a playoff spot and an Eagle loss would have reaffirmed the fan base’s conclusion that their football team was done like dinner.

We all know what happened Thanksgiving Night. McNabb, Westbrook and company utilized a simplified (finally!) offensive game plan to run roughshod over the Cardinals and, for at least another week, keep the Eagles playoff hopes on life support.

That brings us to this Sunday afternoon’s clash with the Giants, to be played in the unfriendly confines of the Meadowlands.

The Giants are good. Really good. And there is no reason in the world to think the Eagles can win this game, despite what happened against Arizona.

As the late, great Richie Ashburn would say, the Eagles beating New York would be "hard to believe, Harry..."

New York has tremendous line play on both sides of the ball, a vicious running game and a passing game whose sole job is to occasionally give their stable of talented RBs a breather. The Brandon Jacobs/Derrick Ward/Ahmad Bradshaw triumvirate is as good as it gets; Eli Manning doesn’t turn the ball over; the defense gets to the quarterback with regularity.

For opponents, it’s a recipe for disaster. The Eagles are certain to find that out – for the second time this year – Sunday afternoon.

It’s not as though we think it’s impossible for the Eagles to win; to the contrary, we have always been believers that anything can happen. The Eagles have enough talent on both sides of the ball to win. We want them to beat their despised division rival.

But they won’t.

We’ll take the Giants by a score of 27-13. McNabb and company will get on the scoreboard early, but the New York ground chuck will wear out the Eagles defense, much in the way they did in Philadelphia earlier this season. Manning’s first down tosses to the likes of Amani Toomer, Kevin Boss and company will provide just enough balance.