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The 4th and 1 was Celek's Fault

I've watched the play a couple dozen times. And the offensive linemen actually did a good job at getting forward movement. Thomas, Herremans and Jackson all get movement. Giles doesn't get any movement but he doesn't give up ground either. And Runyan plows into the end zone.

Celek is playing right TE and he gets beat terribly on the snap to the inside by the left defensive end. That defesnive end falls on top of Giles at the 1 and clogs up the hole and Buck is stopped. As for Schoebel, he was down blocking at the defensive end was playing to his outside shoulder. He wasn't supposed to block that guy. But that was Celek's man and he beat him bad. And I'm not even sure if he did chip him, the Eagles would have scored.

Also, the play and the personnel were strange too. Basket is in as a wingback off Celek. Why Basket? Why not use a tackle eligible. And to make matters worse, Basket doesn't get off the ball and lets the safety dive in and get a hand on Buck's feet as he's running toward the pile.

And making this play even more painful is that Jackson and Heremans open a nice hole that McNabb could have easily scored on with a sneak. I'm sure the Birds have some kind of audible on short yardarge for McNabb to sneak, wish it would have been used there.

On the third down play, Celek also got beat by the defensive end who then hit Buck in mid jump. I'm not saying Buck would have scored, but got hit just after takeoff.

And on the 3rd and 1 failure in third quarter, when the Eagles then settled for the Akers missed 50 yard field goal. That was also largely because of a bad block by Celek on that defensiv end.

On the 2nd and 1, Tony Hunt actually does a good job of making a quick cut out of the way of a blizting safety and has no chance after that. Some thought he could have cut through a hole and scored, but Urlacher was right there.

I've read a lot of stuff about LJ needs to go and that Celek is great. But he proved he has a long way to go in blocking. I'm not saying LJ could have done better, but one of Celek's selling points is his blocking because he's not the pass catcher that LJ is then this game showed he's not as good as some have thought.