Eagles Diary of Debauchery

8:40 – As the game begins, the field is seemingly covered in smoke. So either the opening pyro got out of hand, or Andy Reid’s kids have been let out of jail to attend the game.

8:48 – Reno Mahe is back for the punt and the Eagles fans are actually cheering a guy who allowed the Redskins to down the ball at the Eagles’ 5-yard line. Of course, it isn’t his fault as the Skins’ defenders are right next to him before the ball gets there. Last week, the guys didn’t know how to fair catch, and now they don’t seem to know that they are allowed to block.

8:50 – I love these Olive Garden commercials, and how they try to pass their food off as real Italian. That stuff is about as Italian as Louis Farrakhan.

8:54 – During player intros, McNabb gives Caucasian wide receiver Kevin Curtis the nickname “White Lightning.” Why does every white athlete with any ability have to be labeled “White” something? Could you imagine if someone tried to nickname Reggie Brown “The Black Tornado”? There would be a riot. Meanwhile, not loving McNabb with the shaved head. Dude’s head looks bigger than the Liberty Bell.

8:57 – We get our first Fathead commercial of the night. It centers on a photographer with an enormous camera. I don’t like it as much as the one where Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger brilliantly states, “You put it up on the wall, if you don’t like it, take it off... put it on another wall.”

9:00 – Redskins fullback Mike Skinner picks up a 3rd and 1. Nice overreaction afterward. I can’t tell if he’s acting as if he won the Super Bowl, or as if he represented the Grand Champion in Michael Vick’s underground dog-fighting ring.

9:03 – Oh, here’s that Budweiser Select commercial with the booty-kicking Q-Tip song in it. Can anyone tell me the name of that song? Meanwhile, is it not hilarious that they are basically admitting that regular Budweiser is camel piss? “This is the good stuff.” Personally, I am going to hold out until they release Budweiser “The Shiznit.”

9:06 – McNabb is sacked on a 3rd and 8. While trying to get away, McNabb ran like old people getting jiggy after running a marathon. Not pretty.

9:11 – Tafoya checking in again, this time to tell us how, when Campbell signed his first NFL contract, he bought his Momma a house. See, now that is the sort of original storytelling I expect from a football analyst!

9:12 – The Skins’ Shaun Suisham drills a field goal while the moronic ESPN announcers debate how hot The View’s Elizabeth Hasselbeck is. Man, I’m sorry the game action had to interrupt that scintillating discussion. Skins 3, Eagles 0.

9:14 – Commercial for the Cavemen show. Insert your joke here.

9:15 – Correll Buckhalter is back to return kicks for the Eagles. This can’t be good. Didn’t this guy get his leg amputated three years ago?

9:18 – Faced with the dreaded prospect of actually talking about the game that is being played, play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico chooses instead to talk about Andy Reid’s family issues.

9:19 – McNabb hangs Reggie Brown out to dry and he just about gets his head taken off by Redskins safety Sean Taylor. As it has nothing to do with things going on off the field, it barely gets a mention from the announcing crew.

9:21 – Brian Westbrook breaks, like, 26 tackles on the way to a 27-yard gain. Every time he touches the ball something good happens. Can’t he just play QB the way the guys who never returned punts before got to return punts last week?

9:23 – The ESPN crew is STILL talking about Andy Reid. As an afterthought, Akers nails a field goal to tie the game at 3-3.

9:26 – In order to better deal with the announcing crew, I pour my second heaping glass of red wine.

9:27 – Here’s an ESPN commercial with the Cowboys’ Tony Romo. Wow, I really hope he didn’t fumble any of his lines.

9:30 – William James makes a huge interception at the Skins’ 38, holding on despite a vicious hit by Clinton Portis. My question: Do you think Will Petersen would have held on to that one?

9:32 – The ESPN crew sets a personal best record by talking about the actual game for two consecutive minutes!

9:34 – McNabb has the Eagles in the red zone. First, he throws a ridiculous screen to should-be-former Eagle Greg Lewis on 2nd & 10. Then he throws a pass that Yao Ming couldn’t catch if you gave him a forklift and some circus stilts. Did I mention that the pass was whipped at the speed of your average Concord jet? Akers makes a 39-yard field goal to give the Eagles a 6-3 lead.

9:39 – I must have wandered onto a Pop Warner game as Michele Tafoya is currently talking about how Jason Campbell’s Dad taught him never to “put his head down” over a bad play. Useless.

9:41 – Sean Considine gets hurt, but the announcers are so busy listening to themselves speak, that they don’t notice until... 9:43.

9:45 – Huge sack by Juqua Thomas, who really needs to work on his sack celebration. He was close to “invented a time machine,” but didn’t quite achieve “found a cure for cancer.”

9:48 – Westbrook runs for 12 yards. Oops, the announcers missed it as they are busy plugging the halftime show.

9:52 – In a huge spot, McNabb throws behind Kevin Curtis. Let me pause for an analogy regarding McNabb’s accuracy tonight: McNabb is to accuracy as Darfur is to humanitarian sanctuary.

9:59 – In the booth, Ron Jaworski calls a quarterback sneak on 3rd and inches a “gutsy call.” Huh? What did he expect? A Hail Mary?

10:06 – In some of the most pathetic football I have ever seen, the Eagles play the “prevent” and let the Skins march down the field only to watch the bumbling idiots fail to get off a play on two consecutive snaps (delay of game and false start). Gibbs is so flustered that he inexplicably sends out his field goal unit despite the fact that there are 14 seconds on the clock and it is second down. Perhaps wondering who his progeny is robbing on this wonderful evening, Reid fails to get enough players on the field to defend the play so he needs to call timeout. This allows the Skins to think about how dumb they are being. So they send out the offense again, and the Eagles promptly give up a 20 yard touchdown strike. The extra point makes it 10-6 going into the half. In 75 years full of Eagles failure, this is a sequence unmatched in the level of its disgustitude.

10:06 – McNabb and the home team walk off the field to a chorus of boos that will have sensitive Donnie paying therapist’s bills for the next millennium.

10:09 – No way in hell that I’m watching the halftime show, so instead I do the dishes, take the dog for a bathroom break and listen to a few tracks off of Kanye West’s awesome new disc, Graduation. This guy may be the most arrogant person in the history of the world, but the keys on “Good Life” are insane, the collaboration with Coldplay’s Chris Martin on “Homecoming” is actually tolerable, and “Stronger” is the type of jam that will have you walking down the street feeling like the coolest man on the planet. That is until you trip over the homeless dude trying to catch a nap on the sidewalk.

10:24 – It’s game time again, and intrepid sideline reporter Kolber is back with an urgent scoop. Apparently, the Eagles were dejected at the half. Thank you, Sherlock Holmes.

10:30 – Desperate for some insight about how the Eagles can turn this thing around, ESPN instead offers us Charles Barkley in the announcers’ booth.

10:34 – OK, now that we have established that Mahe can catch the ball, would it be too much to ask for him to pick up a positive yard every once in a while?

10:35 – Here’s a Priceline commercial with William Shatner in it. This showboating has-been actually was nominated for an Emmy the other night for Boston Legal. Meanwhile, HBO’s The Wire couldn’t even get a nomination for Best Craft Services. The Emmys are officially too stupid to ridicule.

10:39 – The whole booth has been whining for like five minutes about how the Eagles fans are sooooooo hard on McNabb and Eagles coach Andy Reid. To support their point, they ask noted philosopher Charles Barkley about his Philadelphia career. That was like 15 years ago, Dude!

10:43 – On cue, McNabb, all-time great that he is, holds onto the ball forever and gets sacked.

10:45 – Boredom has set in: I’m reading the Kanye liner notes. On one jam, the stellar “Champion,” Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are listed as the main songwriters, with Kanye West listed only for “additional lyrics.” Say this song wins Best Rap Song at the Grammys. Would two guys who were actually dirty old men in their 20s get to accept an award for hip-hop? AWESOME!

10:47 – As the game begins to turn on Washington’s dominant running game, the booth talks about Bill Belichik and the stale Patriots’ videotape scandal. Barkley mentions 15 times that he is Belichik’s “friend.” Good for you! I consider switching to WYSP on the radio before I remember Mike Quick’s tenuous grasp on the English language.

10:53 – Washington hits a 37-yard field goal for a 13-6 lead.

10:55 – Monte Reagor, a spare defensive lineman, just ran back a kick for the Eagles. In other news, the Webster folks decide to put a picture of the Eagles’ special teams unit next to the word “disarray” in the dictionary. I’m gonna need another glass of Paesano.

10:58 – McNabb runs for a first down…and runs for another one on the sideline. Seriously, the guy can’t even stop himself. He has to run into a huge coach for assistance. I quickly look up whether a team has ever won the Super Bowl with a cripple behind center. Not looking good.

10:59 – Apparently, the Phillies blew an 11-0 lead in Saint Louis. The booth says they are down 12-11. Kill me now. (By the way, it was later found that St. Louis not only never led the Phils, but never tied them. They had their facts wrong. Imagine that.)

11:01 – One highlight: We have reached the two-and-a-half hour mark and ESPN has failed to make one cheesesteak reference tonight. Mark my words: Someone will be fired for this.

11:03 – Barkley states that the Eagles are in the “same class as the Colts and the Patriots.” Yeah, except for that whole “winning a championship” thing.

11:05 – I’m officially channel-surfing: Both Real Time with Bill Maher and the Justin Timberlake concert are on my HBO package right now. If I wasn’t getting pseudo-paid to write this, I would flip a coin over those two.

11:07 – Barkley finally leaves the booth. That means ESPN’s announcers basically ignored the game for 37 minutes. No biggie.

11:12 – The Redskins have scored 13 points so far tonight, yet Jaworski is trying to make Campbell sound like the second coming of Johnny Unitas. Then again, McNabb is playing like Bubby Brister, so his perspective might be off.

11:16 – Brian Dawkins recovers from a slight stinger. That’s nice. It would have been tough to put a whole city on suicide watch. Oh, Clinton Portis just scored a touchdown to put the Skins up 20-9. Close the bridges!

11:21 – Evidently WRs grow on trees as Kornheiser just wondered why the Eagles haven’t “gotten more wide receivers” like Terrell Owens. Meanwhile, I just contemplated putting a five-iron through my TV screen.

11:28 – Timberlake is performing “Senorita” right now on HBO. This dude sings, dances, plays piano and guitar; when will it be OK to like this dude without fearing that I could fall victim to a hate crime?

11:30 – McNabb just killed some worms with a second down pass, but Jaworski says it’s not his fault because no one is open. At this point, I think No. 5 could videotape himself doing the Running Man while blowing up the Ben Franklin Bridge and Jaws would find a way to blame Hank Baskett.

11:32 – Akers kicks a field goal to make the score 20-12 Skins.

11:38 – McNabb completes an 8-yard shovel pass after illegally crossing the line of scrimmage. The refs don’t see it, and the play doesn’t rate a mention from the announcing crew as Kornheiser is busy talking about how Gibbs is really a funny guy.

11:40 – McNabb throws a second down pass to three Redskins. They are gracious enough to not intercept it. The Eagles repay their kindness by running a fruitless run up the middle on 3rd & 2. Even though I’m drunk as hell, I pour a lucky, fourth glass of table wine. McNabb completes a 19-yarder to Reggie Brown to keep the Eagles' hopes alive.

11:44 – Two-minute warning comes, allowing me to switch to the J.T. concert in time to see a totally insane guitar solo by a side musician. The face is hidden, so I wonder: “Is Timberlake now huge enough to get Hendrix to return from the grave for a special engagement?”

11:47 – On 3rd & 6, McNabb throws a horrible pass to Kevin Curtis. If he gets it near the guy, it’s a touchdown. Jaws blames the mistake on either global warming or al Qaeda, I’m too toasted to remember which.

11:49 – McNabb hits “White Lightning” just as safety LaRon Landry is coming with some “Black Lightning.” Curtis drops the ball and the game is over. Washington wins 20-12. But all is not lost, Eagles fans: I have a half-full jug of Paesano and there’s an hour left in the Timberlake concert. Holla!

Image Credit: Flickr user WukieGrl http://www.flickr.com/photos/krystyn_wukiegrl/418886028/