The Eagles came out tonight and looked pretty terrible against the Vikings. There's not a whole lot more analysis needed. The defense basically played like it has all season, but the offense was a real disappointment. The offensive line was terrible, but that's not really new. The only difference was that Michael Vick wasn't able to do something amazing to save them. He looked more like preseason Vick with a couple bad turnovers and generally never looking comfortable. He was getting beat up all night and it really looked like it was getting to him.
The whole night had a weird feel to it with the stadium not entirely full, the game being moved... the team really did look totally out of synch. The loss means the Eagles are locked into the #3 seed, which is actually the silver lining from tonight. Michael Vick especially looked exhausted, Asante Samuel is still limited in practice, Trevor Laws got banged up... Overall the Eagles looked like a tired, beat up team. You never want to see the team come out and look as poor as they did, but the fact is that they could really use a break. If it wasn't going to be a first round playoff bye then it might as well be in week 17. Now that the Eagles literally have nothing to play for against the Cowboys, it's very likely that you're going to see the Kevin Kolb/Jerome Harrison/Clay Harbor/Riley Cooper show next week. That's not really a bad thing.
So while they came out looking terrible tonight and there's really no excusing that, you might actually say that this isn't the worst case scenario. For me, going all out to win these last two games and still not getting the first round bye would have been worse. Then you're going all out for three games in 12 days. Now, the majority of the starters will almost certainly get next week off, which is something they sorely need. Suddenly, three games in 12 days isn't so daunting when you've had a chance to rest some guys next week.