One of the many questions on the minds of Eagles fans heading into week 1 and the season on the whole was how the defense would gel and perform. A new coordinator is enough to arouse that nervous curiosity, but losing leaders like Brian Dawkins and Stewart Bradley, then seeing their anointed replacements fail to secure the starting roles in the preseason had us feeling entirely uncertain at best.
Turns out things aren't so bad after all, at least within the small sample size of one dominant performance. You'd be hard pressed to find a better overall defensive showing than the Eagles put forth anywhere in the league this past weekend. So how did the individual parts work to make the whole so effective? Good question, and it's one that Philly.com's "Moving the Chains" blog has sought to answer today. Yes, while I was watching Cadillac Records last night after the Cliff Lee gem, Sheil Kapadia put on the game film and wrote up some brief player capsules at MTC. Worth a read if you're killing some time before you bolt for lunch.
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