{"id":441,"date":"2009-12-29T01:39:03","date_gmt":"2009-12-29T06:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=441"},"modified":"2009-12-29T10:43:43","modified_gmt":"2009-12-29T15:43:43","slug":"one-night-three-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=441","title":{"rendered":"One Night, Three Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday night was a great night of sports watching for me, as I watched three games, one in person and two on TV, and all three were good wins for Philly sports fans.\u00a0 I was in North Philly for the 7PM tip-off of 19th-ranked Temple’s rout of Bowling Green.\u00a0 Then I\u00a0was back at my parents’ house in the suburbs to see the Bears knock off\u00a0the Vikings, keeping the Eagles’ hopes of a first-round bye alive, and the Sixers pick up a nice win in Portland.<\/p>\n

\"jackson\"The Bears-Vikings game was the best of the bunch and, ironically since it was the only game that didn’t involve a Philly team, it was the game I was rooting for the most.\u00a0 The Eagles lost to the Raiders in mid-October and they were just 5-4 in mid-November.\u00a0 They’ve had their three best offensive players (McNabb, Westbrook, Jackson) each miss at least one game due to injury.\u00a0 The offensive line and linebacking corps have been patched together with whatever they could find (Jeremiah Trotter? Winston Justice? Moise Fokou?) all season.\u00a0 And yet, despite it all, they’re now just one win away from a first-round bye and a home playoff game in the divisional round.<\/p>\n

The Birds have won six in a\u00a0row, and with the recent slides of the Saints and Vikings,\u00a0they might be playing the best football of any team in the NFC.\u00a0 A note of caution: if the Eagles lose to Dallas,\u00a0then they\u00a0may have gone the whole season without beating a team\u00a0with a winning record, as their “best” wins right now are against the 8-7 Giants and Broncos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That being said,\u00a0the offense\u00a0has looked so good that it’s hard to imagine they couldn’t\u00a0keep that going against higher quality opponents.\u00a0 We’ll see on Sunday, as the Cowboys have surrendered the fewest points of any team in the NFC.\u00a0 If the Eagles are going to take the coveted 2-seed, then they’ll have to earn it by going into Dallas and picking up what would be their most impressive win of the season.\u00a0 If they can do that, we have a title contender on our hands, if not it’s most likely “wait ’till next year.”\u00a0 Another note of caution: center Jamaal Jackson is done for the year with an ACL tear.\u00a0 It looks like the plan is to move Nick Cole to center and insert Max Jean-Gillies at right guard.\u00a0 Hopefully this isn’t the one offensive line issue that will finally ruin the unit.<\/p>\n

If anyone missed the Vikings-Bears game,\u00a0the second-half (and overtime) was a classic.\u00a0 \"favre\"As much as I don’t like Brett Favre, he\u00a0will always be interesting to watch.\u00a0 All of the off-season hoopla that surrounded him and Jay Cutler just added to the spectacle of them playing gun-slinger against each other in a tight game.\u00a0\u00a0Favre led the Vikings back from a 23-6 deficit to tie it at 23.\u00a0 Cutler and the Bears answered quickly, 30-23.\u00a0 Favre still had 5 minutes to work with, and he got it done with 16 ticks left, on a perfect pass to Sidney Rice, tied at 30.\u00a0 It went back\u00a0and forth in the OT before Cutler ended it with a long strike for the game-ending score, 36-30.<\/p>\n

That game-winner was set-up by an Adrian Peterson fumble.\u00a0 On Saturday night, me and Bry debated who is the best back in the league, Peterson or Chris Johnson.\u00a0 He said Johnson, I said Peterson.\u00a0 But if Peterson keeps fumbling, I’m not so sure.\u00a0 He also needs to stay healthy.\u00a0 I think it’s a push right now and it’s something to watch in 2010.<\/p>\n

\"iverson\"The Sixers somewhat shockingly went into Portland and beat the excellent Blazers, 104-93.\u00a0 Nights like these are the reason I wanted\u00a0Iverson to come back.\u00a0 It felt like old times, sitting on my parents’ couch, watching AI drive by defenders to the rim, or pull up and knock down an 18-footer.\u00a0 He scored 19 on 7-11 shooting, in his return after missing four games with an injury.\u00a0 And yes, in the old days you would’ve had to tie one arm behind his back to get him to only shoot 11 times, but flashes of the old AI were there.\u00a0 And speaking of flashes of old times, Elton Brand scored 25 points with 9 boards.\u00a0 I won’t suggest that this game is a sign of anything, but\u00a0having Lou Williams, Iverson, and Iguodala playing together worked well in this one.\u00a0 The Sixers were definitely able to take advantage of the Blazers missing their centers, Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla, as they drove to the basket repeatedly without fear of a shot-blocker waiting for them.\u00a0 And, of course, it\u00a0probably didn’t hurt that Willie Green missed the game with an ankle injury!<\/p>\n

Finally, those nationally-ranked Temple Owls got off to a slow start but turned it on to\u00a0overpower and blow\u00a0away Bowling Green, 64-39.\u00a0 The Owl defense has been great.\u00a0 The talented trio of Ryan Brooks, Lavoy Allen, and Juan Fernandez will lead this team to the tournament for the third\u00a0straight season.\u00a0 I’m not sure how they’ll fare\u00a0against Kansas on Saturday, but this bunch will be a tough out all season, and certainly in March.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday night was a great night of sports watching for me, as I watched three games, one in person and two on TV, and all three were good wins for Philly sports fans.\u00a0 I was in North Philly for the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,9,65,3],"tags":[868,808,75,867,348,869,5,4,305,551,831,832,146,836,93,52,74,587],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsb-in-attendance","category-college-hoops","category-nba","category-nfl","tag-adrian-peterson","tag-allen-iverson","tag-bears","tag-bowling-green","tag-brett-favre","tag-chris-johnson","tag-cowboys","tag-eagles","tag-elton-brand","tag-jay-cutler","tag-juan-fernandez","tag-lavoy-allen","tag-lou-williams","tag-ryan-brooks","tag-sixers","tag-temple","tag-vikings","tag-willie-green"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}