What they're saying - Eagles fall to Raiders

Donovan McNabb didn't seem to acknowledge his own part in the troubles the Eagles had yesterday.

"I can speak for myself and should speak for everybody about the way we came out here and played. We are a much better football team. I've always said that for the young team that we have, that we have to take baby steps. There will be a point in time that we hit a wall and we didn't expect to hit the wall today. This is a learning experience and one that, for myself and as well as the veterans, we have to lead these younger guys to understand there will be times in the season that things don't go well."

Obviously the young lineman struggled, Brent Celek had some drops and had some awful efforts in the blocking dept, and Lesean McCoy missed at least one block... but I saw the young WRs getting open and McNabb failing to hit them. I don't feel like he acknowledged his poor play here. He seems to think it was a failure of leadership on his part, which may have some truth to it... but it was also a failure of execution on his part as well. Not only was he terribly inaccurate, he was attempting to call timeouts when the team had none which is something a veteran should know better.

Sheldon Brown voiced some obvious frustration on the part of the defense.

"You give up 13 points," cornerback Sheldon Brown said with a shrug. "Our goal has been to hold teams under 17 points ever since I've been here and we did that. It's just one of those damn dreams and we're still dreaming it."

Asante Samuel echoed that, "Thirteen points, you're supposed to win the game," he said. "But we didn't make the plays to win."

No doubt it had t be hard for the defense to go out and make stops time and time again only to see the offense go three and out time after time. That said, I would caution Sheldon and Asante that there were times that receivers were wide open and they won't have Jamarcus Russell to bail them out every week. A big part of the reason the score stayed 13 was because Russell was so bad. There's a good argument to be made that any other starting QB in football would have taken advantage of at least 2 opportunities by my count that could have ended in TDs. Plus, Asante's tackling was atrocious.

More after the jump

King Dunlap must have been watching a different game than we were.

"Seymour is a Pro Bowler, a really good guy. I didn't feel I was thrown in the fire. I always have to be ready . . . I have to be ready when my time is called. I did all right - I just have to get better."

You did not do "all right." A young reserve lineman against a pro bowler is a tough matchup for sure and I would have never expected Dunlap to shut down Seymour... but he was abused plain and simple.

Jason Peters talked about the frustration of having to watch from the sidelines.

"It was very disappointing, man, because we're so much better," said Peters, who injured his left knee in the first quarter. "We're so much better than that. It was disappointing just watching that. I wish I could be out there with them. If we were going to struggle, I wanted to struggle with them. It was disappointing sitting on the sideline."

Brian Westbrook on running(or not) the ball

"You never know. In hindsight, we would want to run the ball a whole lot more. You would want to control the clock a whole lot more. We've had a lot of success throwing the ball in these first four games, so it's hard to go away from that. I think that looking at it we had some success running the ball. Hopefully we will have more success."