EAGLES NEWS

The Birds met the Cardinals this afternoon in the NFC championship game, just 60 minutes of good football away from the Super Bowl. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be. The Eagles defense had no answer for Kurt Warner and Cardinals high powered offense, well at least not in the first half. It was a different story in the 2nd half with Donovan Mcnabb coming back to life to throw 3 TD passes en route to a 375 yard passing day, rallying the Eagles back ahead, but it wasn't enough. Other major contributors on offense for the Eagles included Desean Jackson with 6 catches for 92 yards and a TD, Brent Celek with an Eagles record 10 catches for 83 yards and 2 TDs, and Kevin Curtis with 4 catches for 122 yards. Defensively, it just wasn't the Eagles day, although they shut down the Cardinals offense for most of the 2nd, half Larry Fitzgeral had already shredded them for 3 TDs and over 100 yards receiving. Also after the Birds finally got the lead in the 4th quarter, they were not able to get that last defensive stop that they needed for the win. The Cardinals began the afternoon with a bang, as Warner capped off the opening drive of the game with TD pass number 1 to Fitzgerald. The Eagles answered with a field goal to cut it to 7-3, and then got in position for another field but David Akers missed from 47 yards out, giving Arizona good field position. The Cards than ran a little flea flicker on which Warner hit Fitzgerald for TD pass number 2 for a 14-3 lead. The Eagles answered with another field goal to cut it to 14-6. Then the Cards put together another drive capped off by Warner to Fitzgerald number 3 for a 21-6 lead. Finally Neil Rackers drilled a 49 yard field as time expired to give the Cards a 24-6 halftime lead. All seemed lost for the Eagles but they responded big time in the 2nd half. Mcnabb hit Celek to cap off consecutive TD drives late in the 3rd quarter cutting the lead to 24-19, as Akers missed an extra point on a bad hold. After another defensive stand relatively early in the 4th quarter Mcnabb hit Jackson with a 62 TD pass and suddenly the Eagles led 25-24. It seemed destiny was on their side after all, but after stopping the Cardinals on a 3rd and short on the ensuing drive, they couldn't stop them on 4th and short and the Cards were able to chew up clock and drive to the go ahead score with just under 3 minutes to play. So the stage was set, the Eagles trailed 32-25, with under 3 minutes to play, and needed Mcnabb to engineer one more TD drive to force overtime and keep the game live. After driving to their own 47 yard line the Birds stalled and on 4th and 10, the officials missed an obvious interference call on ex Eagle Roderick Hood, as Kevin Curtis dropped what would have been a first down. The Cardinals took over and were able to run the clock down but the Eagles defense held the and the Birds had one last shot from inside their own 20. They tried to lateral the ball the down the field but couldn't get far past the 20 yard line before the Cards took the ball away and eventually fell on it to end a heart breaker. So once again the Eagles come up empty and their wait for a championship will now balloon to at least 49 years and who knows perhaps they can get it to an even 50.